After Dispute, Novelist Gets Amazon Deal

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Kiana Davenport, the Hawaiian writer whose publisher canceled her forthcoming novel after accusing her of dallying with Amazon, has a new publisher: Amazon.

The retailer is issuing Davenport’s Civil War novel, “The Spy Lover,” in August under its Thomas & Mercer imprint. Amazon, which will publish the work in Kindle and paperback, is billing it as “a novel of extraordinary scope that will stand as a defining work on the Chinese immigrant experience.” Amazon might be new at this publishing game, but it can already hype with the best of them. “The Spy Lover” was originally supposed to be published by Riverhead, a division of Penguin, under the clunkier title “The Chinese Soldier’s Daughter.” But then Davenport’s editors found out she had issued a collection of previously published short stories through Amazon’s self-publishing technology.


After Dispute, Novelist Gets Amazon Deal