By Siobhan O’Leary

The German trades are full of talk about the Amazon Orwell deletion. Among the most notable is the short opinion piece by Boersenblatt editor Holger Heimann which compared the deletion to a bookseller sneaking into someone apartment to reclaim books that have already been purchased. “Disaster is inevitable. A precedent has been set,” he wrote.

Buchreport.de highlights bookface.de, the new video platform of literature.de. that allows readers to upload videos recommending their favorite books. Publishers may also feature book trailers for a small fee, but, says Sven Trautwein, editorial director of the site,  bookface.de’s unique selling point is its video content from readers. The site has already had reviewers as young as ten years old post videos.

In a letter to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Dr. Fabian Franke, Director of the University Library at the University of Bamberg, spoke out in support of Open Access. Buchreport summarized the letter, in which Franke pointed out that University of Bamberg publications still sell in print form even though are available for free online.