Pushed over by Amazon

[dilerniapub]

Hi all,

I wanted to bring this to everybody's attention, as this can affect anybody who publishes for e-readers.

I've published a few books through the DTP. They're all public domain titles, but not merely books grabbed off of Gutenberg or similar sources. Rather, I try to compile anthologies that people would find interesting or useful. And they do, as witnessed by the sales of the books.

By far the most successful book has been our edition of the Complete Sherlock Holmes, which spent some 50 days on the Amazon UK bestseller list. Until today.

This morning, I received the following e-mail from Amazon:

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Dear Publisher,

Thank you for submitting your title(s) through DTP. We have not received a response from you so we are unable to confirm that you are authorized to sell these title(s). For this reason, we will not be making the following title(s) available for sale in the Kindle store at this time:

The Complete Sherlock Holmes (complete collection; interactive table of contents) by Conan Doyle, Arthur (AUTHOR), Digital Item ID: 719923

If you are still interested in making these title(s) available for sale on the Kindle store, please resubmit as a new title from your bookshelf.

Thank you,

Amazon.com

---------------

There had been no e-mail regarding this title, at all (I checked my archives), not to mention that the book had been published over 2 months ago, meaning that the review process was over.

Notice also the lovely fact that this is signed by "Amazon.com" rather than the name of the person who specifically made this decision. Unsurprisingly, none of my e-mail queries got a response. When I called, I was, of course, told that DTP does not do phone support, but after a while of bouncing around from one person to another, some lady named Crystal (?) told me that she would go speak directly to the DTP people, who apparently work in the same building. She told me she would get back to me within an hour and refused to give me either her direct line or her full name. Needless to say, no call back from her either.

If this is a copyright issue, which it can't be, why are the following editions of the same material still available?
http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-S...s=digital-text
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Sherl...s=digital-text
http://www.amazon.com/Sherlock-Holme...6248342&sr=1-3

I am also NOT content to "re-submit" the book. It was on the bestseller list! I would like to have the book un-blocked and re-instated as is. This is NOT fair. I am severely disappointed in Amazon.

Regards,

Olga

[desertgrandma]

Welcome to MobileRead, Olga.

I'm sure its not a copyright issue, as we have had that book available here free for quite some time.

[DaringNovelist]

Amazon found that they were flooded with redone public domain material - all of them with some enhancement. They just didn't see the need for 100 recompilations. They announced last spring that if you were not the copyright holder of the material, they wouldn't accept it, even if it was legal. They were working on some methods to let in scholarly editions, but I don't now what the status is.

Bottom line, recompilations and links aren't enough for them to accept it as a new edition any more.

Camille

[doreenjoy]

It's not only happening on public domain titles, either.

Legitimate publishers with over 1,000 books at Amazon are getting notices that they have to provide proof that they have the rights to publish the book. It's annoying, to put it mildly.