George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four features a totalitarian regime that erases documents deemed inappropriate. The novel was erased by Amazon from its electronic book service Kindle. (Canadian Press)

In a major mea culpa move, Amazon says it will replace digital versions of two George Orwell books that it removed from its Kindle electronic digital readers at no charge for affected customers.

The online book service emailed clients saying it would provide copies of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm as recompense for its controversial actions in July.

Customers could also opt for a $30 US gift certificate or a cheque, instead of getting the two books.

Attached to the email was a copy of an apology by the company's CEO Jeff Bezos in the days after the erasure in which he called the deletions "stupid, thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles."

The company had said it was forced to remove the books from its e-book service because another company had uploaded the novels to Amazon's catalogue and that company did not have the rights to sell them. However, that explanation differed from what Kindle users had been told by Amazon's customer service department, which implied that the removal was the publisher's choice.

The erasures triggered a wave of criticism that compared Amazon's actions to the totalitarian government featured in Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which documents deemed inappropriate are dropped into a "memory hole" and were gone forever.

The company was also sued by a high school student who said he had taken notes on his Kindle and they were also gone along with his copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four.