This morning we posted an alert about three Kindle Books which were listed as free for pre-orders.

Amazon has now, as of early afternoon, changed its Kindle Store listings for these three books so that they are no longer free. Whether the listing was a Kindle Store glitch or, as it might seem to some customers, a bait-and-switch tactic, Amazon should refund any charges levied against customers who naturally believed they were pre-ordering these books at no charge, and issue an apology for the confusing website behavior. It is especially important for the Kindle team to be proactive in this case, given the fact the these were pre-orders and Kindle Store customers probably will not see evidence of the charges on their credit or debit accounts until Monday (the books’ Kindle release date) at the earliest.

The telephone number for Kindle Support is 1-866-321-8851 (1-206-266-0927 outside the US).

Update: By way of explanation, a contact at Amazon emailed Kindle Nation Daily this afternoon: “In this case, the publisher decided this morning to end the free promos, timing and control of which is at their discretion.”  

As shown in the screenshot below, although the books in question are no longer listed as free, they continue to show up as of 2:30 pm EST 1.29.2010 in response to a Kindle search for zero-priced titles.