Amazon Delaying Public Domain Submissions On Kindle 100
I own and run one of the primary contributors of new public domain e-texts on the web: sacred-texts.com. I am (was?) in the process of converting all of the 2,000+ e-books at sacred-texts into Kindle editions. I use a homebrew preflight Kindle filter to construct the Kindle binary from my master files, which we have invested nearly a million dollars into creating. We spend thousands a month in-house doing legal clearance, scanning, OCRing, and proofing, often by domain experts. So we are hardly a fly-by-night operation. In fact, many of the PD texts floating around on the Internet and on the Kindle were originally done at sacred-texts at great investment of labor and time. Our Kindle return rate is close to zero.
I just received the following email from Amazon:
Dear Publisher,
We're working on a policy and procedure change to fix a customer experience problem caused by multiple copies of public domain titles being uploaded by a multitude of publishers. For an example of this problem, do a search on "Pride and Prejudice" in the Kindle Store. The current situation is very confusing for customers as it makes it difficult to decide which 'Pride and Prejudice' to choose. As a result, at this time we are not accepting additional public domain titles through DTP, including the following:
The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ
The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ
Traces of a Hidden Tradition in Masonry and Medieval Mysticism
The History of the Knights Templar by Nicolas Notovitch
...
If you believe that we have wrongly identified this title as a public domain title, and you are the copyright holder or are authorized to sell it by the copyright holder, then please reply to title-submission@amazon.com with appropriate documentation of your e-book rights.
Thank you, Amazon.com
One key point is that Amazon has applied this ban completely non-selectively. Established publishers such as myself and others who have never had any quality control issues whatsoever, and give good value for the price, have all been tarred with the broad brush of "Public Domain Publisher — do not post."
By banning new public domain books from the Kindle, they are making an implicit decision as to which books people should read. You can argue that "you can get these texts anywhere," but by excluding high-quality Kindle books from the nascent Kindle marketplace, Amazon is implicitly deciding what is a valid part of our culture and what isn't. This trend does not bode well for the future of e-books.
1984? (Score:5, Insightful)
This move is probably related to the whole 1984 incident, which was caused by someone uploading and selling content that they didn't possess the rights to. The whole episode was a huge embarrassment for Amazon, and I can certainly see why they're being more diligent in this area.
Self interest (Score:5, Insightful)
The article would be more interesting - if it were an actual article rather than a rant about how Amazon won't grant them unlimited access to Amazon's customers. (Which is their right dammit! They've spent a million dollars!)
A couple points (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Why don't you sell the books yourself?
2.One key point is that Amazon has applied this ban completely non-selectively.
This seems to me like a good thing. They've identified a problem, too many public domain titles that are dupes (Slashdot had a dupe problem too). They are apparently working on a solution.
Now if, in a few months, they are still blocking all public domain book, then there's a problem.
IP industry would rather you didn't know PD exists (Score:2, Insightful)
Otherwise, people might start asking questions like "If copyright used to expire, why doesn't it now? Are effectively infinite copyright terms really in the public interest?"
Public Domain (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually they're really making a decision on which books they wish to deliver on their service, paid or unpaid. Honestly I can get behind Amazon on this as the appropriate policy to have in this situation is broad-based denial to avoid exactly what they're stating; multiple copies of public domain works, whose redundancy will create a negative user experience, and to which the public (not an individual) holds the copyright. And in this situation, if the work isn't being provided for free (as a public domain work), the potential for abuse is extraordinary. I would chide Amazon for not providing a dispute process based on the quality of the supplied work, or an alternate pricing scheme for businesses such as the OP's, but I do not fault them for this policy in general.
What are you fighting for? (Score:4, Insightful)
Amazon is implicitly deciding what is a valid part of our culture and what isn't. This trend does not bode well for the future of e-books.
No shit? It looks more like they're deciding to limit copies of a book to one in their store. The implications of that are probably more like "... deciding what they think is in their own best interest as a profit seeking company."
I like how you took the high road here and argue your point on a moral level. You know, when it's obvious your beef with Amazon is over the income it's costing you. Normally "yro" means a bunch of annoying BS to me, but masquerading as someone that generally think the decision by a company to limit the books to one copy (not even prevent you from reading it, but eliminate the dupes!) that can be read on a device I've never even seen anyone use is going to somehow have even a slight impact on society takes the cake.
have you tried? (Score:4, Insightful)
Damned if they do... (Score:4, Insightful)
Didn't Amazon get in hot water by allowing someone to offer up "1984" and "Animal Farm" claiming they were public domain works, then yanking them back when it turned out the third party who submitted them was (I'll give them the benefit of doubt) in error as to the status of that work in the US? Didn't everyone get their unmentionables in a big old snarled bunch about that? I think I can still hear faint echoes of the screams.
Result: Amazon has to make damned sure every claim of public domain work is accurate by the laws of the country in which the work is sold. So if someone submits "1984" as a public domain work again, they'll have to stop it before it gets published. If they make another mistake, they're either gonna get boned with sand instead of vaseline by the copyright holder or have to break their promise never to delete the works again and suffer another PR nightmare.
If Amazon is to be held responsible in the eyes of the public for any mistakes their publishing partners might happen to make, then they have an obligation to their stakeholders to audit the holy living crap out of everything, which means even if FSM Himself came down with the 10 Rules of Noodly Appendagement claiming them to be public domain, Amazon would have to do a due diligence check.
Re:IP industry would rather you didn't know PD exi (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree, since the Kindle has a large quantity of free and PD books available.
But I think the larger point that Amazon has is correct - that having multiple versions of the same book, each of varying quality, is not a good thing.
Take the case of freecddb vs CDDB (just from a technical standpoint, forget politics or the nasty stuff that CDDB did). When I rip a CD and use freecddb, I'll get varying answers. A 2-CD set often has different artist or album names between the two CDs. Misspellings are common. But CDDB has the CD listed only once, and the information is almost always correct (of course, I still use freecddb most of the time, then mutter, make corrections, and send them up for verification).
Some of the free ebooks I've downloaded for my Kindle are of okay quality (I've found a number of formatting or misspelling issues) compared to non-PD books I purchased from Amazon.
The answer, unfortunately, is that Amazon has to have only a few copies of a book on its site that is of good to great quality, but allow you to download ebooks from other sites (I note that sacred-texts.com didn't have an ebook version of the KJV Bible, for instance, otherwise I may have downloaded it).
Shelf Space (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not? (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot of older works are/were only available in hardcover editions, which means there is a cost of converting them to a text format. It's a one-time cost, sure, but it's not insignificant.
There are a number of sites like Distributed Proofreaders who organize a boatload of volunteer effort to convert the print works to digital. The article yesterday about Google's application of reCAPTCHA is another way of getting the words into digital format.
But then, beyond that, there's the issue of formatting. A lot of people like readable illustrations, placed in the text where the original author intended. Some want the book to show as pages, with page numbers matching that of the original work, and if Amazon wants a good user experience they have to make sure to select (or reformat) a work that looks good on the Kindle.
The works themselves are public domain, yes, but that doesn't mean there's no profit to be made in formatting them for a specific device or even converting them from one format to another.
I agree that Public Domain works should be clearly labeled so if the user wants to go get the Project Gutenberg or Distributed Proofreader version for free (or a donation if they want), they have that option. However, that doesn't mean that Amazon or their publishers shouldn't be allowed to profit from doing the conversion and formatting work.
Re:Why not? (Score:1, Insightful)
Um, text does not a book make. Typesetting and arrangements (and of course accuracy) are the areas where versions compete. I would be willing to pay $10 for a book that was pleasant to read instead of a plain .txt version of the book. I'm sure I'm not alone in that. As Google's efforts demonstrate, acquiring copies of ALL public domain works is difficult and in most cases probably will not recoup the investment. By deferring to 3rd parties, Amazon isn't taking on the full risk for each book's successful digital sales. They are serving as the market and letting the collective knowledge determine which books are worth porting by those who know their submarket.
Re:1984? (Score:5, Insightful)
And the publisher who put "1984" and "Animal Farm" on Amazon's marketplace claimed they WERE Public Domain. Except they turned out to be wrong.
Amazon was roundly criticized for it, and their clumsy handling of it. Now Amazon needs to make sure that any works that they publish as Public Domain REALLY ARE Public Domain. They can't recall the works - they promised they wouldn't. But if they are not authorized to sell it then they end up selling it, things could get really ugly.
I sincerely doubt that Amazon is involved in a black helicopter conspiracy to keep anyone from reading any public domain work they damned well please on their Kindle, for the very simple reason that there is no benefit to Amazon for doing so.
However, they do have an obligation to copyright holders and their own stakeholders to make sure that anything they claim as public domain is, in fact, public domain. They can't afford another mistake.
And they also have a vested interest in making sure that people can find a single, well-formatted, vetted version of each book. If I search for (as the example states) "Pride and Prejudice" and I find dozens of copies of it, I'm going to think that the Amazon bookstore is a jumbled confused mess. Especially if I have to download a dozen of them to find one that is in acceptably readable format for the Kindle.
Um, waaah? (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that other 'publishers' are using the versions of the work that his company produced is unfortunately the nature of "freely available", and how a certain subset of the population tries to capitalize on it.
Re:A couple points (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree that this is probably not a big problem. You might think that having public domain books wouldn't be attractive to Amazon because they miss out on the profit of selling books, and therefore there's some nefarious motives here.
On the other hand, having public domain books available is probably very attractive to Amazon in that it makes more content available for the Kindle, which means the Kindle is a more attractive product. If they want to sell Kindles and sell content to the Kindle, then having a bunch of free content available is a good thing. My guess is there isn't anything corrupt or nefarious going on, but they really are just trying to sort out the submission process as they claim.
Re:1984? (Score:3, Insightful)
I sincerely doubt that Amazon is involved in a black helicopter conspiracy to keep anyone from reading any public domain work they damned well please on their Kindle, for the very simple reason that there is no benefit to Amazon for doing so.
Thank you. That line in the summary really bothered me.
And they also have a vested interest in making sure that people can find a single, well-formatted, vetted version of each book. If I search for (as the example states) "Pride and Prejudice" and I find dozens of copies of it, I'm going to think that the Amazon bookstore is a jumbled confused mess. Especially if I have to download a dozen of them to find one that is in acceptably readable format for the Kindle.
This is my assumption as well.
However one thing that I was pondering, and haven't seen anyone mention:
Don't returns damage a retailer? Sure, there aren't the physical problems here, but aren't there credit card transaction fees they have to deal with? On a small scale to a company like Amazon, it is probably a non issue. But if I have to buy and return 5 books to find the one I want, that might start to get at Amazon's bottom line a bit.
Tinfoil Hat:
Amazon is working on publishing public domain works themselves.
Re:1984? (Score:3, Insightful)
Agree 100%. It really is annoying how many "publishers" think a public domain book is worth $4.
Having said that, Amazon should really go all out and just offer the entire Project Gutenberg catalog (giving credit to PG, of course) and be done with it.
"Publishers" who really want to make a new public domain book available to a wide audience can just help Project Gutenberg and it should automatically show up for the Kindle.
Hypocrisy by Amazon (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree that this post is a little strange, in that (a) there's nothing stopping them from offering Kindle editions on their own website, or (2) offering them in other etext formats (there's certainly more than there need to be now).
I can also see how Amazon would be cautious after their 1984 debacle.
However, I'm struck a little by the reactions here on Slashdot. Amazon *is* being hypocritical in their practices compared to their online sales of physical books, and I find it hard to believe that Amazon would improve their case that they are not liable for copyright infringement by taking an active role in screening texts.
As for the first thing, do a search for Shakespeare on the paper section of Amazon. See all those Shakespeare texts? Those are all public domain, and that hasn't kept (1) people from producing value-added unique versions through typography, page design, commentary, etc., and (2) Amazon selling multiple versions of the same Shakespeare works.
The converse of all of this is that I recognize that there all sorts of scams on the physical-goods sections of Amazon where people are selling public domain works for full price without doing any restoration work. So why isn't Amazon being diligent there?
The claim that "we need to make only one version available" rings really hollow to me, and does seem Big Brother-ish. If there were some consistent push across all of Amazon to identify what seem to be scams, I might take them seriously. But releasing a new edition of a publicly available work isn't necessarily a scam, and there are all sorts of scams elsewhere on Amazon that don't get "policed" in this way.
Frankly, I find it insulting that Amazon is deciding that I'm too unintelligent to choose for myself what I want and don't want, and their efforts seem so selective that I am reluctant to give them the benefit of the doubt, and I am skeptical that they are well-meaning but inept in what they're doing. In the end, this *does* seem to me to be an effort to push the agenda of traditional big publishers at the expense of Amazon customers. Maybe if I saw this concern about PD "scams" being taken more seriously throughout Amazon I would take Amazon seriously.
Coyright infringement (Score:3, Insightful)
They're doing it for all of the "self publish" submissions. The reason is that people were uploading copyrighted works that they didn't have rights to, and trying to sell them through Amazon. Because Amazon is financially benefiting from the sale, they are also liable for any copyright infringement. The policy change to require a review process is to cover their butts.
IMO, it's a good thing and should have been done from the beginning. What they were originally doing, letting anyone put items up for sale on their store with no oversight, was a really bad idea.
Re:Self interest (Score:1, Insightful)
Seems reasonable after the 1984 issue, they need a system to make sure the copyright is public domain and need to protect the customer to ensure the copy is worth buying and not just copy and pasted from any number of free public domain book sites.
There was/is a book you can buy that turns out to be all 1's and 0's luckly you can return any book but there needs to be a middle ground between no oversight and too much.
Also complaining about the return on public domain books is sad since anyone can get them for free from gutenberg.org, manybooks.net and many more. If that's your money making plan you may want to rethink your product.