amazon.comにクレームのメールを打ちました。

　こんばんは、ドラです。

　2/16未明頃から、amazon.comのSearch InsideにText Statsの項目が
出なくなり、今後の新刊及び書評未整備の本は語数を推測・計数しなけ
ればならない本が増えるのではないかと危惧しています。

　そこで、まずはamazon.comに対して、日本での多読活動の拡がりと
amazon.co.jpの売り上げとの関係をこじつけて、カスタマー・サービスに
以下の様なメールを打ってみました。

＃ 非常に長いですが…(汗)

　一応、さかい先生と古川先生には、事前にメールでご説明し、酒井先生
ご自身のお名前とＳＳＳの名前を出して、日本での多読の拡がり状況を
説明させてもらいますという事で、承諾をいただきました。

　もし、amazon.comから返事が来たら、また、こちらに掲載しようと思って
います。

----
Dear Amazon.com customer service,

I live in Japan.

I found I cannot see "Text Stats" which was one of the items
in "Search Inside", for any of the books on your online store.
I think it has been from about Feb. 16th.

Why did you quit to provide with Text Stats data?
And would you have no intent to provide us with Text Stats
data anymore ?

First of all, I wonder if you could tell me the reason
about this.

And now I'm afraid we will get troubled with it.
Let me explain our circumstance.

We have been learning English, using our original extensive
reading method, which was invented by Professor Kunihide Sakai,
the University of Electro-Communications, Japan, especially
to be suitable for Japanese learners.

Our slogan is :
"Let's Read Through One Million Words !"

On the other hand, we also have been spreading our method
into Japanese society. This movement has been mainly performed
by Prof. Sakai, the SSS Extensive Reading Study Group (Abbrev. : SSS)
which has been created by Prof. Sakai and other several
members, and Japan Extensive Reading Association.

--- URL for Prof. Sakai
http://tadoku.org/

--- URL for the SSS Extensive Reading Study Group
http://www.seg.co.jp/sss/

--- URL for Japan Extensive Reading Association
http://www.seg.co.jp/era/index.html

Today, we can see more than thousands of Japanese people
practicing this method indivisually, by seeing various kinds
of activity reports on the Web-bulletin-boards in the SSS site
or searching blogs for Japanese extensive readers.

# Most of them are not students.
# They are adults.

Also we can easily see that new learners for our method come
to the SSS's boards or the offline-meetings for various area
in Japan, almost every day.

Furthermore, extensive reading method tends to be adopted
in Japanese ordinary educational system, like as English
class in both public and private high school, recently.

Therefore, in the latest period, not only the number of
extensive readers in Japan is still increasing, but also
it will be drastically enlarged.

By the way, the SSS has its own book-database, sharing all of
extensive readers and still growing its entries as new books
has published.
This database is for providing every extensive readers with
the information which would aid various levels of readers in
choosing appropreate books to read as next.

For this purpose, the SSS classifies the books and gives the
value of level which corresponds how easy / difficult to read
through for typical Japanese readers. We call it YL.

# Actually, the origin of YL came from
# Japanese word. So, please don't care
# what the abbreviation of words YL is.

The value of YL and the number of words which are contained in
a certain book are extremely useful for every learners to consider
whether this book is suitable or preferable for themselves or not,
especially for the beginners.

Recently, we mostly tend to rely on your Text Stats data in order
to know how much words this newly published book has.

Of course, we can investigate the number of words, using some kind
of estimation, if we cannot obtain your Text Stats data.
However, it's always painful to obtain somehow accurate digit,
especially the book is a kind of picture books, in order to
maintain SSS's book database. Actually, we often use a
hand-counting-machine to count the words manually.

Since major portion of our readers enjoy seeing the total number
of words which they have read through and are looking forward to
passing through the millions milestone.
Now I'm truly afraid that some part of our readers would worry
and stop challenging new books that the number of words of the
book is unknown.

Essential part of our readers usually use Japanese Amazon site
(amazon.co.jp) to purchase new English books.

I don't know the profit dividing system between Amazon US and
Amazon Japan entirely.

But I believe it's a fact that we extensive English readers have
much impacts on the forein book department of Amazon Japan indeed.

So I think providing with Text Stats data on Amazon US site would
have possibility to increase sales in Amazon Japan site.

I hope you will consider our circumstance.

And I will be truly grateful if you would provide with Text Stats
or (simply) the number of words, again, someday.

Kind regards,
one of extensive readers and a customer on Amazon Japan
and your future customer
[私の署名をここに書きました]