Amazon is selling, not giving away, PG titles
If you've looked at Kindle books on Amazon you've no doubt seen PG titles that some reprobate has repackaged and is selling as ebooks. It seems that Amazon is doing that itself now. See this page where titles I donated are being sold by Amazon.com Services LLC <https://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Wireless-Telegraphy-Alfred-Powell-ebook/dp/B09N3PTNHQ/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1690328702&refinements=p_27%3AAlfred+Powell+Morgan&s=digital-text&sr=1-1&text=Alfred+Powell+Morgan>. Not given away with the images missing like they used to do, but sold. https://www.amazon.com/s?i=digital-text&rh=p_27%3AAlfred+Powell+Morgan&s=relevancerank&text=Alfred+Powell+Morgan&ref=dp_byline_sr_ebooks_1 I tried to leave comments explaining the situation to prospective customers and those comments never showed up. I found out about this because I have taken many of my PG donations and created KDP printed books from them using LaTeX for typesetting and GIMP for preparing cover images. These printed books ended up looking quite nice and I don't think anyone who bought one ever complained about it. I told them in the description what it was and even included the URL of the PG title and explained that they could download the ebook version for free. About a month ago Amazon told me that printing costs for print on demand books were going up and I needed to re-price my books to get any royalty for them at all. I spent several hours doing just that, and when I was finished Amazon blocked two of my titles from being sold because Amazon does not allow you to use KDP to publish titles that can be downloaded for free. These two titles were part of a twelve volume set of The Mahabharata, so not selling these two and leaving the rest of my public domain print on demand titles alone was not a good option. I complained. For my trouble I got my whole account locked and had to promise to remove all my public domain titles from sale to get it back. I have books I wrote myself on KDP so I needed that account. I followed their rules and unpublished a lot of books that had taken me MANY hours to prepare. This was never anything other than a hobby that in a good year brought in less than 200 dollars. Having said that, these were nice looking books and I was proud to have them in people's homes. I published Hindu scriptures and epics, pioneering aviation books, and radio and electronic books by Alfred Powell Morgan, an author who loomed large in my childhood. Apparently in other people's childhoods too, because they sold better than any of the others. I know Amazon is not doing anything illegal, but I needed to vent about this. Thank you for your time. James Simmons
I'm sorry to hear about this, James. It's unfair that Amazon allows themselves to do something that you cannot do. It's even worse when they are essentially stealing your work, by not paying royalties. We have had poor outcomes from our efforts at getting Amazon to stop stealing Project Gutenberg and condoning those who do. ~ Greg Newby On Tue, Jul 25, 2023 at 07:12:20PM -0500, James Simmons wrote:
If you've looked at Kindle books on Amazon you've no doubt seen PG titles that some reprobate has repackaged and is selling as ebooks. It seems that Amazon is doing that itself now.
See this page where titles I donated are being sold by Amazon.com Services LLC <https://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Wireless-Telegraphy-Alfred-Powell-ebook/dp/B09N3PTNHQ/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1690328702&refinements=p_27%3AAlfred+Powell+Morgan&s=digital-text&sr=1-1&text=Alfred+Powell+Morgan>. Not given away with the images missing like they used to do, but sold.
I tried to leave comments explaining the situation to prospective customers and those comments never showed up.
I found out about this because I have taken many of my PG donations and created KDP printed books from them using LaTeX for typesetting and GIMP for preparing cover images. These printed books ended up looking quite nice and I don't think anyone who bought one ever complained about it. I told them in the description what it was and even included the URL of the PG title and explained that they could download the ebook version for free.
About a month ago Amazon told me that printing costs for print on demand books were going up and I needed to re-price my books to get any royalty for them at all. I spent several hours doing just that, and when I was finished Amazon blocked two of my titles from being sold because Amazon does not allow you to use KDP to publish titles that can be downloaded for free.
These two titles were part of a twelve volume set of The Mahabharata, so not selling these two and leaving the rest of my public domain print on demand titles alone was not a good option. I complained. For my trouble I got my whole account locked and had to promise to remove all my public domain titles from sale to get it back. I have books I wrote myself on KDP so I needed that account. I followed their rules and unpublished a lot of books that had taken me MANY hours to prepare.
This was never anything other than a hobby that in a good year brought in less than 200 dollars. Having said that, these were nice looking books and I was proud to have them in people's homes. I published Hindu scriptures and epics, pioneering aviation books, and radio and electronic books by Alfred Powell Morgan, an author who loomed large in my childhood. Apparently in other people's childhoods too, because they sold better than any of the others.
I know Amazon is not doing anything illegal, but I needed to vent about this.
Thank you for your time.
James Simmons
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I guess I don't understand the nature of this "complaint." I think it is quite clear that books that are "out of copyright" are "fair game" for all people to use -- including in ways that we volunteers at PG would rather they do not do. Even if someone -- "us" or "them" -- has done some "massaging" of that book -- it is still "out of copyright." For me personally, I find it troublesome that Amazon takes books that are "out of copyright" and republishes them under their encryption technology, meaning -- perhaps -- I am not a lawyer -- that it is now illegal under USA law for someone to take that "free" book and decrypt it to regain totally "free" access. I guess I am also troubled that Amazon is making it harder and harder to get unencrypted mobi or epub works onto their devices "on the same basis" as e-books we buy from Amazon. But mere "typesetting" whether it is formatting the book "nicely" for paperback printing, or for display on an e-book device, has never been subject to copyright or any other protection. What PG has always said is: "OK, if you do any of these things then please take our name back off of the copy of this work which you are massaging and selling in your own manner." But otherwise, what are you complaining about? What Amazon is doing is "fair game" -- and you should expect no better! In turn many publishers complain that PG and PG volunteers are using "their" books -- once those books are out of copyright. But, once a book is out of copyright it is not "their" book either -- rather it is "ours" -- the entirety of human society -- in turn for having respected and paid-for access to that copyright book over the entirely of its currently insanely long "in-copyright" period! James Adcock ________________________________ From: gutvol-d <gutvol-d-bounces@lists.pglaf.org> on behalf of Greg Newby <gbnewby@pglaf.org> Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2023 1:42 PM To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion <gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org> Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] Amazon is selling, not giving away, PG titles I'm sorry to hear about this, James. It's unfair that Amazon allows themselves to do something that you cannot do. It's even worse when they are essentially stealing your work, by not paying royalties. We have had poor outcomes from our efforts at getting Amazon to stop stealing Project Gutenberg and condoning those who do. ~ Greg Newby On Tue, Jul 25, 2023 at 07:12:20PM -0500, James Simmons wrote:
If you've looked at Kindle books on Amazon you've no doubt seen PG titles that some reprobate has repackaged and is selling as ebooks. It seems that Amazon is doing that itself now.
See this page where titles I donated are being sold by Amazon.com Services LLC <https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FLessons-Wireless-Telegraphy-Alfred-Powell-ebook%2Fdp%2FB09N3PTNHQ%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1%3Fqid%3D1690328702%26refinements%3Dp_27%253AAlfred%2BPowell%2BMorgan%26s%3Ddigital-text%26sr%3D1-1%26text%3DAlfred%2BPowell%2BMorgan&data=05%7C01%7C%7Cef2d5d60e52c4357a05908db8e1988dd%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638260012546075575%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=okxWIfzgUBVJe4qTi%2B5pS6ocw8dY4iCymIHws4eqUjU%3D&reserved=0<https://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Wireless-Telegraphy-Alfred-Powell-ebook/dp/B09N3PTNHQ/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1690328702&refinements=p_27%3AAlfred+Powell+Morgan&s=digital-text&sr=1-1&text=Alfred+Powell+Morgan>>. Not given away with the images missing like they used to do, but sold.
I tried to leave comments explaining the situation to prospective customers and those comments never showed up.
I found out about this because I have taken many of my PG donations and created KDP printed books from them using LaTeX for typesetting and GIMP for preparing cover images. These printed books ended up looking quite nice and I don't think anyone who bought one ever complained about it. I told them in the description what it was and even included the URL of the PG title and explained that they could download the ebook version for free.
About a month ago Amazon told me that printing costs for print on demand books were going up and I needed to re-price my books to get any royalty for them at all. I spent several hours doing just that, and when I was finished Amazon blocked two of my titles from being sold because Amazon does not allow you to use KDP to publish titles that can be downloaded for free.
These two titles were part of a twelve volume set of The Mahabharata, so not selling these two and leaving the rest of my public domain print on demand titles alone was not a good option. I complained. For my trouble I got my whole account locked and had to promise to remove all my public domain titles from sale to get it back. I have books I wrote myself on KDP so I needed that account. I followed their rules and unpublished a lot of books that had taken me MANY hours to prepare.
This was never anything other than a hobby that in a good year brought in less than 200 dollars. Having said that, these were nice looking books and I was proud to have them in people's homes. I published Hindu scriptures and epics, pioneering aviation books, and radio and electronic books by Alfred Powell Morgan, an author who loomed large in my childhood. Apparently in other people's childhoods too, because they sold better than any of the others.
I know Amazon is not doing anything illegal, but I needed to vent about this.
Thank you for your time.
James Simmons
_______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.pglaf.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fgutvol-d&data=05%7C01%7C%7Cef2d5d60e52c4357a05908db8e1988dd%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638260012546075575%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=wFx9uIphMn8CS084Dwz%2FSkJCwcWF6l1imWEqQhBtewI%3D&reserved=0<https://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d> Unsubscribe: https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.pglaf.org%2Fmailman%2Foptions%2Fgutvol-d&data=05%7C01%7C%7Cef2d5d60e52c4357a05908db8e1988dd%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638260012546075575%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=rufYRPvKe2vYfF19o1jA5s8ZTVOlCVtiDMVss8DbRm0%3D&reserved=0<https://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/options/gutvol-d>
_______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.pglaf.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fgutvol-d&data=05%7C01%7C%7Cef2d5d60e52c4357a05908db8e1988dd%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638260012546075575%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=wFx9uIphMn8CS084Dwz%2FSkJCwcWF6l1imWEqQhBtewI%3D&reserved=0<https://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d> Unsubscribe: https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.pglaf.org%2Fmailman%2Foptions%2Fgutvol-d&data=05%7C01%7C%7Cef2d5d60e52c4357a05908db8e1988dd%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638260012546075575%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=rufYRPvKe2vYfF19o1jA5s8ZTVOlCVtiDMVss8DbRm0%3D&reserved=0<https://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/options/gutvol-d>
James, I agree that what Amazon is doing is entirely legal. It just rubs me the wrong way. Create Space and KDP always allowed their service to be used for public domain titles in the past. Apparently they still do, but only if you can't download the text of the book from the internet. The actual policy isn't clear. I mostly resent the people I had to deal with on this. They have the authority to lock your account, but that's it. They can't explain the policy or make exceptions to it. All they can do is send you links to documents that don't explain anything or send boilerplate telling you what you have to do to get your account unlocked. So the hours I spent making these titles was lost and there isn't a damned thing I can do about it. Selling PG books that have been reworked a bit is legal, but I spent time on the donations getting the cover images as close as possible to what the original book had and I don't like seeing them replaced with the crappy cover images they have been given. I don't think Amazon is making much money doing this, but I have to wonder what this is leading up to. I remember reading that Amazon wanted to have a contract with publishers saying that if the publisher chose to stop publishing a title that Amazon could make it available as print on demand. I don't know what happened with that. James Simmons On Thu, Jul 27, 2023 at 1:59 PM James Adcock <jimad@msn.com> wrote:
I guess I don't understand the nature of this "complaint."
I think it is quite clear that books that are "out of copyright" are "fair game" for all people to use -- including in ways that we volunteers at PG would rather they do not do. Even if someone -- "us" or "them" -- has done some "massaging" of that book -- it is still "out of copyright."
For me personally, I find it troublesome that Amazon takes books that are "out of copyright" and republishes them under their encryption technology, meaning -- perhaps -- I am not a lawyer -- that it is now illegal under USA law for someone to take that "free" book and decrypt it to regain totally "free" access.
I guess I am also troubled that Amazon is making it harder and harder to get unencrypted mobi or epub works onto their devices "on the same basis" as e-books we buy from Amazon.
But mere "typesetting" whether it is formatting the book "nicely" for paperback printing, or for display on an e-book device, has never been subject to copyright or any other protection.
What PG has always said is: "OK, if you do any of these things then please take our name back off of the copy of this work which you are massaging and selling in your own manner."
But otherwise, what are you complaining about? What Amazon is doing is "fair game" -- and you should expect no better! In turn many publishers complain that PG and PG volunteers are using "their" books -- once those books are out of copyright. But, once a book is out of copyright it is not "their" book either -- rather it is "ours" -- the entirety of human society -- in turn for having respected and paid-for access to that copyright book over the entirely of its currently insanely long "in-copyright" period!
James Adcock ------------------------------
James, Share-holder corporations have a legal duty (at least in the US) to maximize shareholder value, as expressed in dollars (not in good-behavior scouting badges), and that is exactly what they do. They are large, monopolistic, and will do anything to make more money and spend less -- if they would have had even a trace of ethical behavior, they wouldn't have become that big: competition is eager to go after them. It is a rat race. Apart from a significant political change, that is probably going to stay, and I don't see that change coming anytime soon, with ideological positions so horribly polarized as they are today. My own take on this is to not be bothered by them. Continue to do what you like to do, but make sure you do not get into a position that you are depending on people who can take away your work at a whim. There isn't much money in those books, and by placing them in their infrastructure, you handed them the power to take them away. If you like to share your work, you can also place them on your own website, where nobody has that power. You could even place them on a server at home (if your internet connection is fast enough), or you could upload them on the Internet Archive (although they are working hard to kill that as well). The people who work for them often also have hard choices to make: either do that work, or nothing else. Not everybody has the luxury to quick and go work for an ethical company, or start one themselves. Just take another wonderful book, and recreate it for others to enjoy. There are also a huge number of books on Project Gutenberg that could use a neatly designed cover (using only public domain materials). Jeroen.
Jeroen, I was thinking about uploading the PDF and cover images of my books to the Internet Archive. Maybe that's my best option. James Simmons On Sat, Jul 29, 2023 at 10:48 AM Jeroen Hellingman <jeroen@bohol.ph> wrote:
James,
Share-holder corporations have a legal duty (at least in the US) to maximize shareholder value, as expressed in dollars (not in good-behavior scouting badges), and that is exactly what they do. They are large, monopolistic, and will do anything to make more money and spend less -- if they would have had even a trace of ethical behavior, they wouldn't have become that big: competition is eager to go after them. It is a rat race. Apart from a significant political change, that is probably going to stay, and I don't see that change coming anytime soon, with ideological positions so horribly polarized as they are today.
My own take on this is to not be bothered by them. Continue to do what you like to do, but make sure you do not get into a position that you are depending on people who can take away your work at a whim. There isn't much money in those books, and by placing them in their infrastructure, you handed them the power to take them away. If you like to share your work, you can also place them on your own website, where nobody has that power. You could even place them on a server at home (if your internet connection is fast enough), or you could upload them on the Internet Archive (although they are working hard to kill that as well).
The people who work for them often also have hard choices to make: either do that work, or nothing else. Not everybody has the luxury to quick and go work for an ethical company, or start one themselves.
Just take another wonderful book, and recreate it for others to enjoy. There are also a huge number of books on Project Gutenberg that could use a neatly designed cover (using only public domain materials).
Jeroen.
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I have put the files for my 12 volume edition of *The Mahabharata* by Kisari Mohan Ganguli on the Internet Archive, If anyone is curious to see what Amazon customers used to be able to buy you can check it out here: https://archive.org/search?query=nicestep This link contains everything I have on archive.org, including 3D models from Thingiverse, books I've scanned, and even a couple of books I wrote for the One Laptop Per Child project. James Simmons
Hi James. That sounds like a great gift to current and future readers. Thanks! ~ Greg On Tue, Aug 01, 2023 at 10:26:57AM -0500, James Simmons wrote:
I have put the files for my 12 volume edition of *The Mahabharata* by Kisari Mohan Ganguli on the Internet Archive, If anyone is curious to see what Amazon customers used to be able to buy you can check it out here:
https://archive.org/search?query=nicestep
This link contains everything I have on archive.org, including 3D models from Thingiverse, books I've scanned, and even a couple of books I wrote for the One Laptop Per Child project.
James Simmons
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participants (4)
-
Greg Newby -
James Adcock -
James Simmons -
Jeroen Hellingman