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Originally Posted by thrawn_aj
I ran into that story on another forum. It's essentially bottom-feeders putting up public domain books for sale through Amazon's self-publishing thingie (I'm pretty sure about this but not 100% - couldn't figure out a way to see how some of these books are published for the few examples I found - it said "Amazon digital services" for publisher  ). |
Actually, I think what you're seeing is "Sold by: Amazon Digital Services" - that's listed for every Kindle book in the Amazon Kindle bookstore. And in fact Amazon loaded, by agreement with PG I believe (though I only have that via hearsay, so I might be wrong), thousands of PG ebooks into the Kindle store, priced at $0.00, when they first started it up. They're all still there, and available to Kindle users alongside the other versions of public domain books, uploaded by third parties via Amazon's DTP interface.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thrawn_aj
Mind you, that doesn't mean either of them are in the clear over this. They are ethically bound to filter out stuff like this before allowing someone to self-publish.
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I'm not sure why they should be held responsible for doing that. What criteria should they use to decide "this one gets through, this one doesn't"...?
In general, it seems to me they try to remain neutral regarding what does and does not get into their online store, and that feels right. I don't demonise Amazon the way some here do, but nor do I want them to become some sort of gatekeeper, except in terms of what is or is not legal to sell. They're already limiting the publication via their DTP interface of further versions of PD titles where there are already many other versions available. It's already reaching a point where even those who have spent time and effort translating PD works from English into other languages are having difficulty publishing the translated version via DTP because of Amazon's growing reluctance to accept further PD titles.
- Donna