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Originally Posted by DrNefario
But what protection, if any, would your better version have? Couldn't I just sell that, without having to do any of the work?
Is there some kind of trade protection in the arrangement of the work?
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If I added content, like a timeline and annotations, those would be copyrighted to me, and you wouldn't be allowed to sell them.
If I added formatting value--special fonts, span types, alternating colors on some chapters--you wouldn't be allowed to copy the formatting. But the formatting of an ebook would have to be fairly special to be covered by copyright law.
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Could I buy that $1 version and start selling it for $0.50 without changing a single thing?
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Depends on what's in the $1 version, but quite possibly yes. (Not the cover, probably.) Certainly, you can download the Gutenberg versions and sell them as-is for whatever price you can get for them. You can also remove all the Gutenberg verbiage from them, and sell the core book.
Amazon has a section in its KDP TOS about
publishing public domain content that boils down to "if we have a free version available, your paid version may not be allowed unless it's special."