The Washington post recently release this article criticizing Amazon for for public domain books, specifically Project Gutenberg versions.
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Kindle readers, take note: You may have been paying for books you could legally download for free--in nearly identical editions--elsewhere.
The titles in question aren't just public-domain books that have long been freely available at such sites as Project Gutenberg. They appear to be the exact Gutenberg files, save only for minor formatting adjustments and the removal of that volunteer-run site's license ...
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BoyGenuis has done some digging around and has also found out B&N is also charging for PD books as well.
Post over at the B&N Fourm site
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Basically anyone can do this to make money with no effort: go to http://www.gutenberg.org, download anything you can think of, then sell them on NOOKBooks. You will make some sales, because when you sort by release date your books come up first. ...
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Amazon has responded by stating those books are not Amazon books but where uploaded by a third party using their Self Publish feature.
From the WP story I downloaded the book they used as an example from PG's web site and downloaded the Amazon a sample of the Kindle book and to my surprise they are identical. My initial thought was that this book was reformatted and uploaded hence a charge, however that is not the case it is indeed it is an exact copy.
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