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Originally Posted by doreenjoy
Yes, exactly. But in this case, Amazon did not publish the book. They *distributed* it. Legally there is a world of difference between publishing and distributing.
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Amazon put the book in Kindle format; they formatted the book for sale. (How little editing is involved here is not the issue. Amazon, not the content provider, creates the ready-for-sale product.) Amazon pays the provider of the book a percentage of each book sold; pays royalties directly to authors for works provided by individual authors.
They're acting as a publisher, not a distributor, in many cases. Maybe all, if the formatting alone is enough to make them a publisher. (Certainly books are not available in AZW format through any other company.)
Even as a distributor, their negligent approach to confirmation of legal contents does not allow them the right to take buy individual purchases. It could--IF they got a court order demanding it. They don't get to bypass the step of "get a legal document allowing them to buy back what's been purchased from them, against customer's wishes." The customer isn't required to re-sell what they've bought to the seller at the original price.
A record store that discovers a shipment of CDs was bootlegged doesn't have the right to search customers' backpacks on their next visit, and remove those CDs and replace them with the money they spent on the CD. Especially not if the CD buyer has already marked up liner notes with notations.