There is an unlikely new bestselling author in the world of ebooks, and his name is Adolf Hitler.

On Wednesday, a 99-cent version of Mein Kampf, the Nazi leader’s manifesto, was the top-selling book on iTunes Canada’s politics and current events list. Another edition, selling for $3.99, was in the No. 6 spot.

In Amazon.ca’s Kindle store, it was the top book in the fascism category, with another version at No. 16. And on Kobo, it’s in the top 50 for reference biographies.

Mein Kampf is also racking up tens of thousands of unpaid downloads: it is the second most downloaded item at the Internet Archive’s free Universal Library Project.

Meanwhile, a sales-tracking program popular with small Canadian booksellers shows that less than 50 paperback copies of Mein Kampf were sold in Canada in the past three months.

There is no clear way to determine why readers are snapping up Hitler’s writing for their tablets. But it likely has more to do with the medium than the message: ebooks let readers study Mein Kampf without the worry that someone will catch them with a copy.

“While the Amazon and iTunes algorithms are proprietary secrets . . . current rankings suggest Mein Kampf could be following a similar trend to that of smut and romance novels,” Chris Faraone wrote on Vocativ, a U.S. news site. “People might not have wanted to buy Mein Kampf at Borders or have it delivered to their home or displayed on their living room bookshelf, let alone get spotted reading it on a subway.”

PAST STORIES ON THESTAR.COM

Why some Jews want to publish Mein Kampf

Autographed copy Mein Kampf fetches $38,000 at auction

Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in 1924 in a Bavarian jail, and it was released in two volumes in 1925 and 1926. He begins by recounting his life story, before outlining his views on racial purity and his political agenda. As a piece of literature, the book is long, poorly written and generally considered a difficult read.

Ben McNally, owner of Toronto’s Ben McNally Books, said the disposable nature of ebooks might explain why people are willing to spend a couple dollars to read it electronically.

“Since it doesn’t cost anything, I can see any number of people being willing to just download it and delete it,” he said.

That seemed to be the rationale for one Amazon reviewer with the user name Ron G.: “For a buck, I think I gained a good understanding of Adolph Hitler in prison,” he wrote.

Other reviews on Amazon and elsewhere suggested people had a variety of reasons for reading the book, from historical research to supporting Hitler’s ideology.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Amazon and Kobo didn’t respond to inquiries from the Star about Mein Kampf sales. And the country’s largest national book chain, Indigo, does not sell it as a matter of policy, considering it to be hate literature.

According to TBM Bookmanager, which tracks sales for book retailers, Canadian stores sold 26 paperback copies of Mein Kampf in December, 10 in November and 12 in October, McNally said.

That could point to another reason for readers to get the book online: it is hard to find in Canadian stores. McNally doesn’t keep it in stock and few other bookstores do, he said.

“It’s not easy to get as a book in print,” McNally said. “Hardly anybody carries it.”

New editions of Mein Kampf with commentary criticizing Hitler’s arguments were expected to be published next year in Germany. The book has been effectively banned there, with the state of Bavaria using its ownership of the copyright to keep the book out of print, but the copyright expires in 2015. However, Bavaria backtracked on the plan last month, saying that publishing the memoir would amount to incitement, the Associated Press reported.

Read more about: