In an attempt to recompense for unceremoniously removing copies of George Orwell’s novels ‘1984’ and ‘Animal Farm’ from its Kindle e-reader in July, online retailer Amazon has decided to replace the deleted copies of digital books for Kindle owners, without any charge, along with annotations made by any of the customers.

In its Thursday email to the affected customers, Amazon also gave them the option of receiving a $30 gift certificate or check, in case they no longer desired the books to be replaced.

The e-mail read thus: “As you were one of the customers impacted by the removal of ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ from your Kindle device in July of this year, we would like to offer you the option to have us re-deliver this book to your Kindle along with any annotations you made. You will not be charged for the book.” 

Together with the e-mail, the customers were also sent a copy of the earlier apology by CEO Jeff Bezos, in which he had described the company’s act of deleting of the books as “stupid, thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles.”

Amazon said that it has removed the books from the Kinle e-reader’s of an undisclosed number of customers, upon learning that Orwell’s books had been added to the Amazon catalog by an outside company, which did not have the rights to sell them!