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Apple approves e-book after dirty words removed

Apple initially rejected a book submitted to the App Store for containing what it considered to be objectionable words, but has approved a version without the naughty language.

Tom Krazit Former Staff writer, CNET News
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Google, as the most prominent company on the Internet defends its search juggernaut while expanding into nearly anything it thinks possible. He has previously written about Apple, the traditional PC industry, and chip companies. E-mail Tom.
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Apple has approved a version of Knife Music as an e-book application after the author removed words Apple considered objectionable. Amazon

An e-book submitted to Apple's App Store has been approved after the author removed language that apparently offended Apple.

CNET's David Carnoy wrote a book called Knife Music last year, and attempted to submit it to the App Store as an e-book. Apple rejected his application for containing "objectionable content," which appeared to be a couple of uses of that four-letter word that starts with F.

But Carnoy decided to remove that type of language from the book, which he said didn't amount to all that many words in the first place. Upon resubmitting the application, it was approved, and can now be found on the App Store.

"I decided to censor because it wasn't that big a deal. I changed it very little. It's more important to have people check the book out--along with the whole concept of ebooks on the iPhone. It's kind of virgin territory now, but it's going to be really big soon," Carnoy said in an e-mail.

There aren't a ton of e-books themselves on the App Store, but there are also e-book reader applications that let you read e-books purchased from another web site on your iPhone. Carnoy said he preferred the standalone application approach because it's much easier to find specific books on the App Store.