Clean Reader

Honestly can't understand why people are so worked up over this app - when I buy something, I should have the right to alter it. When I read a book, it will often afterwards be filled with notes and highlights and my own take on what the author is saying. Why, then, would it not be my right to decide how I want to read a book that I own? And what right do I have to force another to only have one option of how to read a book? Dissapointing to see how much some people want to force their views. Great app!

Only 1 because there is nothing lower.

Excited....NOT!!! Downloaded it and it promptly stopped. Great idea...Poor execution.

Despite all the reviews about censorship being evil, I think it's fabulous. I for one can't stand a good book being ruined by senseless foul language, and this is just the thing I need to be able to read in peace. THANK YOU for making this app!

Writers write what they do for a reason. If you're some precious little snowflake who cannot abide "potty stuff" as someone put it, stop reading. Don't bowdlerize good fiction to suit your prejudices. You're not reading those books, you're reading the books you want them to be. This app is for people who can't deal with reality.

This app is an abomination of censorship and religious overreach. If you censor out profanity, good luck fully understanding any of the works from many of the most famous authors in the last 1,000 years. The forced censorship of somebody's literary art, followed by replacing their words, is a direct violation of copyright laws. It's like painting a turtleneck shirt over Mona Lisa's cleavage. Good luck with those lawsuits!

Changing a book without an author's permission is bad, aggrandizing the idea that words are chosen haphazardly is worse, and the fact that all of this is done in clear piracy and copyright violation is the worst of all. These people are stealing the works of others, then making unsanctioned changes, and profiting off of it.

I'm so glad this app exists. I was really looking for a way to take swear words out of pdfs before viewing them on Kindle but this app is the only way I found to do that. Thank you to the developers, stand up for the freedom each person has to view the things they find acceptable. Just because an author wishes to use swear words doesn't mean I have to be forced to read it. A censored swear word still leaves the impression of the passion the author wished to share without having the actual word influencing my thoughts. Just because I chose to type this review doesn't mean you are forced to read it. Are we square? The idea that I can't cover up parts of something that I am the person viewing is ridiculous. Allow people to make their own choices and don't complain if they wish to remove certain words from influencing their thoughts. It doesn't affect anyone who likes to read the swear words in any way.

Excited....NOT!!! Downloaded it and it promptly stopped. Great idea...Poor execution.

Thanks it's lots of help I feel a lot better now

As a Christian, I choose what I want to read, watch and hear as carefully as I can....Not because I "should", mind you. But because I want to. I believe it is possible for an author to use the rest of the words in the English language to convey their intended meaning without writing garbage that brings down their readers. THANK YOU FOR THIS APP!!!

I'm really confused about why an app like this exists. It's one thing to create an app that specifically finds books for you that are written without profanity, but it's another to rewrite something that someone else has published. If you're wanting to read books that are not offensive, then wouldn't you purchase a different book than the one that is offensive to you? You clearly don't want to read the book as the author intended it to be read, so why are you wasting your time reading it? Not a fan of this.

Authors write books to have an impact, editing what you deem offensive can ruin that. This is censorship at best, imposing your biased religious morals at worst.

As a Christian, I choose what I want to read, watch and hear as carefully as I can....Not because I "should", mind you. But because I want to. I believe it is possible for an author to use the rest of the words in the English language to convey their intended meaning without writing garbage that brings down their readers. THANK YOU FOR THIS APP!!!

The only people opposing this are those spouting free speech. That's fine if you want to read it. It isn't taking anything away from you. And since I won't get anything that has cursing the authors should be glad this is here. I will probably buy some of their books now!

As an author, I find this execrable. If you use this app, don't read any of my books. I don't want your business. You support censorship and ebook piracy by using this app.

Censorship and copyright violation rolled into a neat little app. Use this app if you not only want to violate an author's copyright to have her own words published, but also if you want to censor her (ya know, like the Nazis did). This app is an abomination and the developers should be ashamed of themselves.

An iniquitous app, promoting censorship and solving a problem which doesn't exist. All lovers of free speech should avoid this app at all costs.

Wow! What a firestorm! I don't like to read profanity, but I don't go giving books that have it a 1 star rating. Tell me, if your family buys a pizza with mushrooms on it, which you don't like, do you eat them out of respect for the pizza maker who carefully put them in the pizza, or do you pick them out and leave them on the plate? How hypocritical of you! This app only makes what I read more enjoyable for me; not forcing it on you. Get a life!

Clean Reader "works with any e-book" to allow its users to alter the appearance of books they've purchased through their store. Books like Requiem for a Dream, for example, wherein two young women perform double (rectal) penetration for an audience of men in exchange for drugs in one of the scenes. Using this app, you're still exposed to that scene, just without any profanity. And so are your kids. This app can not be relied upon to censor profane content for you or your children. Clean Reader hides or replaces words, not scenes or themes. Plenty of other reviewers have already stated the obvious issues of altering the voice of a piece, and why authors would have a problem with that. I won't beat a dead horse, I'll just say I agree. This app is wrong on so many levels. If you're a parent trusting Clean Reader to keep your kids from reading profane content, I strongly urge you to reconsider. It will not do that. The content (albeit a diluted version of it) is still there. Monitor the genres and age ranges of books you and your children read. Those books that contain words that offend you probably contain ideas and symbolism that will offend you as well.

I'm really confused about why an app like this exists. It's one thing to create an app that specifically finds books for you that are written without profanity, but it's another to rewrite something that someone else has published. If you're wanting to read books that are not offensive, then wouldn't you purchase a different book than the one that is offensive to you? You clearly don't want to read the book as the author intended it to be read, so why are you wasting your time reading it? Not a fan of this.

This is possibly the dumbest idea for an app it's ever been my displeasure to witness. I really hope it gets pulled from the store soon. My young daughter has a better grasp of the context and power of words than these imbeciles.

Authors write books to have an impact, editing what you deem offensive can ruin that. This is censorship at best, imposing your biased religious morals at worst.

By offering an unauthorized translation of some of the words in any book purchased from their web store, Clean Reader is infringing on the copyrights of authors. Where the "cleaning" of words without permission is deemed okay, "cleaning" of ideas is never far behind. Examples on the Interwebz provide sample passages that contain highly erotic content and pass right by Clean Reader, so parents thinking this will protect their children should think again. The app also allows the reader who wants to avoid immoral words the ability to go on supporting the authors of those immoral words without having to face what their dollars are supporting. Clean Reader is allowing profanity to be packaged in a moral wrapper, and they take their cut of every purchase.

Censorship of the worst kind. When I write, I seldom actually use curse words. In those few times that I do it is because I am displaying how passionately I feel about an idea and to see someone deny me my passion because they are so easily offended by the merest implication that not everyone speaks in the same sanitized prose they like to use disgusts me. I sincerely hope that a legal protection is found that allows authors to seek reparations for their damaged literary reputations after someone reads a "cleaned" version of their story, gives a poor review and causes them the loss of thousands in sales.

Despite all the reviews about censorship being evil, I think it's fabulous. I for one can't stand a good book being ruined by senseless foul language, and this is just the thing I need to be able to read in peace. THANK YOU for making this app!

Thank you so much for producing this app. It provides freedom of choice for the consumer. Please do not be discouraged by these mind control freaks who would wish to censor us from making our own decisions about what we read. Be aware that resorting to profanity indicates the author's limited language skills and can be a flag that their work is not worth reading in the first place. One author outraged at this app suggested not ever reading their work - good advice

This app represents hideous presumption, censorship, and religious bias. An author (or any creator) uses particular words for a reason. If you can't handle the words the author uses, you should pick a different author or story rather than personally bowdlerizing their work to suit the expectation that everything can be sanitized. Also, if you can't handle words you view as swear words, how can you handle the other complex concepts in much of literature? Change the language of something like Huckleberry Finn and you change great swaths of the meaning and conversation it should spark. Change character dialogue in almost any work with this reprehensible app, and you destroy verisimilitude the author worked hard with real editors to create. This idea that everything can be customized and sanitized to suit some delusion of moral authority over language is abhorrent and goes against the grain of what writing and literature should represent.

First of all I feel strongly enough about this to actually go through the hassle of making a Google+ account. Which is a whole other story. I think this whole idea is terrible. If someone doesn't want to read profanity they don't have to read it. If you don't think you'd like a book, don't read it. If you're not sure if it would offend you or not and don't want to spend money to find out.. There's this thing called a library. GO there borrow book and see if it is offensive or not. With this app you are not reading the book the author wrote, you're reading some abridged edited edition that might bear some resemblance to the original book. But then again it might not. And since I've already read one post by an author demanding that her work be removed (She was never asked for permission.). I strongly suspect that these edits are done totally without permission. I'll be posting over on the itunes store as well as spreading the word about this "app".. I notice that it doesn't give you the list of permissions it wants in the additional information section either. This will be uninstalled as soon as I post this review. Real rating is negative 5 stars.

This is not censorship. You can fast forward scenes in movies. You can hit the mute button. You can whiteout words in a book or tear out pages. Who are you all to say that's wrong? The reader should be able to do whatever they want. This app allows the same. I find it frankly pathetic that the people who decry censorship and claim to uphold open minded thought and freedom are the same people who attack and descend on ideas that they don't agree with. You don't want your books to be censored? Don't use this app! But for the rest of us who would prefer to read less profanity, I am glad I have the choice to do what I want with the books I bought. And no, I have no relation to the developers. I found out about this because I am developing something similar, and these guys beat me to it.

If atheists and others want to and can take the name of God, Christ, and any other Christian words out of everything they don't like and censor our content, then why can't we? Excellent app for those books that carry a great story and have interesting content but just a few too many profanities that detract from the writing. This ISN'T censorship and I am so sick of the whining about it. Get over it! We Christians go through this EVERY minute of every day. EXCELLENT app!

This app is an abomination of censorship and religious overreach. If you censor out profanity, good luck fully understanding any of the works from many of the most famous authors in the last 1,000 years. The forced censorship of somebody's literary art, followed by replacing their words, is a direct violation of copyright laws. It's like painting a turtleneck shirt over Mona Lisa's cleavage. Good luck with those lawsuits!

Yes, this app is disrespectful to all writers out there. Do you go to a museum and draw clothes on naked portraits? Then don't mess with a writer's text. If I chose colorful language for a character it's for a reason. I've worked with lots of book related start ups and had this app been developed in a respectful way, we authors would've been politely invited to participate, not had our books included in something we disagree with. Have some respect for all the blood, sweat, and tears we put into our work.

All these doorknobs whining about censorship should go make me a sandwich. If you don't like it, don't use it. I think it's a great idea, it just doesn't work worth any of the ebooks on my device.

But why stop at getting rid of objectionable words? Why not purge ideas that might make people uncomfortable like racial inequality or income disparity? Just whitewash them out of discourse so we don't have to think about them. For that matter, since mine is the only "right" religion, political party, etc. let's just get rid of any books, pamphlets or people that disagree!

I found books by authors I know personally that sell EXCLUSIVELY on Amazon. You do not have ANY right to sell these books, especially at 5x-8x the price they are on amazon and are not even giving the authors their due!! I work for 4 of the authors on this app. I know for a fact you are charging more. You also need written permission from these authors or their publishers if not self-published. I have spoken with them and you in no way attempted to contact them in order to sell their books.

As a reader who doesn't believe profanity is necessary I think this is great. I notice that most successful mainstream authors don't use it, so I know one can practice one's craft without offensive language. So as stated "I don't believe" cussing necessary write how you want and I'll read how I want.

Writers write what they do for a reason. If you're some precious little snowflake who cannot abide "potty stuff" as someone put it, stop reading. Don't bowdlerize good fiction to suit your prejudices. You're not reading those books, you're reading the books you want them to be. This app is for people who can't deal with reality.

As someone who has spent the last 24 years of their life writing, this app is an absolute monstrosity to me. Who are you to decide what's profane and what's not? Other people's creative works are not yours to play with or to edit or to change or to otherwise vandalize with your Christer nonsense - because that is essentially what this app does, it takes an existing work and spray paints God all over it. Disgusting.

We watch movies, TV shows that have curse words bleeped out. This is no different. We see photos of people and Children pixilated. When you pay for a book, it is yours to do what you want. Blocking anything on your personal devices in your home is not censorship. It is your personal choice. I have a right not to see it, the same as others have the right to see it on thier devices.