[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by SigilBear

Yes, I bought an ebook from someone (Amazon?), and it turned out to be nothing more than a quick scan, with entire page that were illegible. I can't believe they had the nerve to sell it.

Typically you should use Amazon's Look Inside feature to at least take a glance at the quality before you buy.

Also, it is a good idea to look at the publisher + a few other telltale signs (very generic cover + have thousands and thousands of public domain books and pump out multiple books per day).

And you could always report the book and Amazon will crack down. Rate it 1 star and give your reasoning (including the Publisher's name), and it will help others from getting scammed.

Side Note: On the 1-star rating though, I personally wouldn't do that with "merged books" (the ones where you can choose from a multiple different years/printings/copies of the same book). Amazon combines all reviews into one banner, so your 1-star review complaining about Scam Publisher X would drag down actual LEGITIMATE copies of the book.

I wish they had some sort of Non-Star Reviews/Comments. Or if/when Amazon merges them in the future, it should specify this review came from Publisher X.

Originally Posted by SigilBear

Someone recently told me about another organization that is trying to digitize books in the public domain as fast as they can.

[...]

Actually, I was thinking of these guys:

International Digital Publishing Forum -- http://idpf.org/

IDPF is the standards body behind making the EPUB format. Didn't know they did much else. Have any specifics on this?

Originally Posted by SigilBear

Wikipedia is bizarre. They've made some great contributions, but their political content isn't just stupid - the folks at Wiki appear to be paid propagandists. I'm going to be writing a lot about Wikipedia in my political series.

I suspect you wouldn't get those kind of problems on arcane "history of specific state flag" pages.

It reminds me of this one article I read a while back by a Wikipedia Editor, "Why I write about battleships":

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/05/2...t-battleships/

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Always check the Wikipedia talk tab. This gives the broader picture that may be missing after the last edit.

And Wikipedia has its own Rules + Recommendations + Procedures in case this happens. Personally, if I ran across a power-hungry insane person I would just move on to the thousand other topics/pages that could be updated.

Why waste time bickering back and forth over a few paragraphs on Important Person X when you could be expanding all the important info on every State Flag?

Originally Posted by SigilBear

Creative Commons is an interesting idea, but would I be able to sell it? And, if so, couldn't someone else just copy my book and sell it themselves?

Yes + not necessarily.

There are a handful of different CC4.0 licenses you could apply (and that section of their site I linked you to has easy buttons):

• Allow adaptations of your work to be shared?
  
  • Yes
    
  • No
    
  • Yes, as long as others share alike
    
• Allow commercial uses of your work?
  
  • Yes
    
  • No
    

They then link to a more thorough explanation of the exact license. As an example, if you chose "Yes" + "No" you get CC-BY-NC 4.0:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

You are free to:

Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format

Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material

Under the following terms:

Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.

* * *

There is also an extensive FAQ on their site that answers plenty of questions. As an example, "May I apply a Creative Commons license to a work in the public domain?":

https://creativecommons.org/faq/#may...-public-domain

and there is a little article explaining "Free Cultural Works" here ("Free" as in "Freedom", not Free as in $0):



https://creativecommons.org/share-yo...ain/freeworks/

Side Note: And as I stated before, I personally tend to go for much closer to the Public Domain. The freer the better!

Originally Posted by SigilBear

But, yes, Google is a player, too. The weird thing about Google is that they make things so complex. Like if you look up a particular book and find a dozen references, and you can't access the book with any of the links.

You could thank the Author's Guild for much of that nonsense (it was a giant 10+ year battle):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/1...-books-lawsuit

Personally, I look Archive.org first (older books). If not there, I go searching the Googles... who knows what was shared where (for example, the Economics website I do most of my conversions has hundreds of PDFs/EPUBs of books for free).

If the book isn't easily available to read online, it drops HEAVILY down on my priorities, and I would go looking for alternate sources. If it is available as Print only, it just drops to the very bottom of the barrel for me.

But again, I mostly read older Non-Fiction works and I have such a giant backlog of books to read already I will never catch up. And I am just constantly digitizing more and more books so others don't have to suffer like me.