Why would they do this?!? Kindle vs Print

[CheerfulYank]

This is going to contain spoilers for the book the Original Sin, by Marius Gabriel. Be warned!

So, when I was 12 or so, my mother had the aforementioned book and I wasn’t allowed to read it due to its “risqué” nature. (I believe my dad referred to it as “racy” at the time 😆)

I read it every chance I got, naturally. I loved it.

The main character of the book is a woman named Mercedes, who lived through the Spanish Civil War. The book begins in the 70s, when her adult daughter (Eden) has been kidnapped by a man named Joel, who is demanding millions in ransom.

SPOILERSSSSSS

Eden and Joel fall in love. If I recall there are some spicy scenes between them but it stops short of actually having sex, with him telling her it’s a sin etc.

The main twist in the book is that it’s revealed that Joel is Mercedes’ son, given up for adoption to hateful cruel religious parents who beat him and hated him, so he resents Eden for having the life from “their mother” that he feels he deserved.

(12 year old me was INVESTED at this point)

Now, in the story I remember, there’s a scene at the end where Eden, after being reunited with her mother, realizes that she is actually adopted herself and thus not related biologically to Joel. She’s all “now there’s no sin in being in love” or something like that and skips off into the desert with him to presumably live happily ever after. (12 year old Cheerful was delighted) After, of course, convincing Joel that she wasn’t dead of a drug overdose…you know what, it’s a lot. Moving on 🤣

Anyway, years later I thought of this book again and got it on Kindle, only to find a completely different ending than the one I remembered. In the Kindle ending, Mercedes tells Eden “he’s still your half brother” and Eden is basically like “well we’ll figure it out”?!

I thought I was going crazy…I finally ordered a cheap paperback copy and went straight to the end when it was delivered, to find everything was as I remembered it.

It seems that for whatever reason, the kindle version is chopped up and re-edited. The reviews of people who bought the kindle version talk about the ending being “gross” and it’s annoying because that isn’t even the real ending!

Has anyone else ever experienced anything like this, and why would the company do this?!

Oh that is annoying.

Reminds me of this song

https://open.spotify.com/track/221hHUAsw9HmKQFEoCpZ8L?si=2eNmQAhvT7Stx_RANV6fvg

The story does, not the changing of the ending

You missed a key word there but I figured it out 🤣

This is actually quite a common thing I’ve come across people talking about - digital versions of books being edited and censored. Though in this case it sounds like they’ve made it worse. But it’s a one of many reasons why we should be buying real books

Did I? What was it?

It’s so odd. I understand a bit of editing here and there but it really changes the entire ending.

Oh it does!

Yes, it’s annoying. There are other things too. In the ending of the print copy, Mercedes goes to see Joel and he’s standing by a bonfire where he’s just burned all the money he got from the ransom, to show her he doesn’t even care about it and just wanted her to suffer.

In the kindle version, he gives it back. For what?! I mean, fine, but why make that change specifically?

I don’t know this book, but I am delighted to see @CheerfulYankhere again!

That’s even more annoying than when films are different to the book.

I would assume they’ve just altered the ending of all editions, but the Kindle is instant, whereas any print editions will have to sell out of the old edition before the new one becomes available.

Why alter the ending is another matter.

Well, that’s annoying. It totally changes the ending.

I realized as well that while the physical copies of the book were put out by a legit publishing house (Penguin or Putnam or a similar one), the Kindle edition was released by an odd one that I’d never heard of. I wonder if these companies were buying up the rights to books and chopping them up to hop on the Kindle bandwagon.

I still wonder WHY, though! It doesn’t make it all that much shorter or anything.

Aw, shucks ☺️ Hello!

It’s possible, I suppose. I’d never heard of him, but just looked him up, and his current agent — would it be fair to say that with the kind of formulaic romance he wrote in the 80s and 90s, many for Mills and Boon, there would be little likelihood of them being reread? Also, he’s really bounced around different publishers a lot, so that’s bound to have consequences for backlists being treated differently.

Maybe! This particular book wasn’t like that though (I think Mills & Boon is equivalent to Harlequin here) although it would admittedly be a stretch to call it highbrow literature.