Morris Rosenthal, the man who posted a helpful list of free classics on the Kindle store last month to help readers bypass unnecessary fees, just announced that Amazon pulled his test version of a Dickens classic and told him that they were cracking down on duplicate public domain titles.
Here’s part of Amazon’s email to Rosenthal:
“Our vision is to have high-quality editions of every public domain title in the world available on Kindle, including a free edition of each, and to avoid the confusion that is caused by having a large number of undifferentiated (or barely differentiated) versions of each.
“To protect the customer experience we have decided to stop accepting and selling duplicate, undifferentiated versions of public domain titles where there is a free edition already available for sale.”
Rosenthal received the email because he’d self-published a copy of “A Tale of Two Cities” to test just how easy it is to make money off of public domain titles. He writes that he was selling 4 or 5 a day at 99 cents each before Amazon removed the copy from the store.
This is great news, but don’t expect it to improve every search. Two randomly selected titles, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and “The Three Musketeers”, still return multiple listings of non-free versions of these public domain books.
There appear to be two criteria that must be met. First, Amazon has to have published the public domain ebook on the Kindle store. Second, the for-profit public domain version from some other publisher has to be published after Amazon’s edition.
Hopefully Amazon will eventually make this policy retroactive and begin to clean up the store’s virtual shelves. Until then, at least it’s taking baby steps toward making the shopping experience better for select public domain titles.
“The Kindle Public Domain Publishing Model” [Self Publishing 2.0]
(Photo: Phillie Casablanca)
By Tony Wilson December 6, 2010 - 6:00 PM
Great timing. Oprah’s double feature of T2Cit and GrExp has hit kindle (and paperback) courtesy of Penguin at 7.99. Perhaps I will combine a few with a short commentary of how William S gained insights of Charles D’s times with the help of time travel explained by … BTW _most_ ‘free’ versions in South Africa carry the $2 charge Amazong adds to all paid-for eBooks.
By Chris Walters December 6, 2010 - 10:36 PM
@Tony Wilson – Wow, $2 per book is pretty outrageous. Have you tried Project Gutenberg’s Magic Catalog or Feedbooks’ Kindle catalog?
http://www.freekindlebooks.org/MagicCatalog/magiccatalog.html
http://www.feedbooks.com/help/kindle
By Tony Wilson December 6, 2010 - 11:51 PM
@Chris Walters, Thanks – have bookmarked your free book page – and added smashwords
Do try this at home: Sign out of Amazon, search a known book and change the region/go at the left … and be glad you don’t live in Europe Africa India
By Tony Wilson December 6, 2010 - 11:41 PM
@Chris Walters, I only recently ventured over to Amazon to investigate publishing a book for my 88yo mom – from scanning 25 year old newsprint to on sale in a week! In the process I came across a few free non PD books so I signed up and downloaded Kindle for PC. The first book I free-bought prompted me to supply physical delivery address. Complied honestly and the rug was yanked from under me. This book is not available in your region blah blah. Went from 750k books avail to under 500k and all prices were the maggic $2 higher.
By Tony Wilson December 7, 2010 - 1:11 AM
@Chris Walters, Look to your right, now back at me (apologies to Old Spice). See “Stupid Amazon” sorry “Stupid Christmas” for 0.00 ? UK 7.02! Africa 2.00. Go figure. It’s the publishers that are the root of this mess. The Amazon $2 leaves me cold though. I know it’s not tax as the Europe prices are 15% higher than Africa ones. Must be that they pay AT&T roaming rates for 3g and they need to recoup the “free”. $2 buys 7Mb to 60Mb of 3g in SA so they must have a poor deal. And it should not apply to Kindle for PC!
By Chris Walters December 7, 2010 - 9:15 AM
@Tony Wilson:
“It’s the publishers that are the root of this mess.”
Yes. They’re all operating under territorial restrictions set up back when global reach wasn’t a realistic option. I imagine we’ll see more worldwide licensing agreements for new books as we move forward, but most titles up to this point have been carved up by different rights holders in different regions, so they all get to call the shots locally. At least, that’s what I imagine is happening when a book is free in one country/region and regular price in another.
That $2 fee, on the other hand, sounds like old-fashioned gouging by cellular carriers.
By Anon December 8, 2010 - 4:10 PM
It’s more than just public domain. Amazon removed the option to put up a free version of ANY book. This is bad news.
By Chris Walters December 8, 2010 - 4:18 PM
@Anon: Well, I think Amazon took away the free option with their Digital Text Platform a year or so ago. My guess is they decided to stop footing the bill for downloads of free texts. The only way to offer a title for free is to be a publisher and strike a deal with Amazon–DTP is off-limits for now.
(Which is too bad because I imagine some DTP users would agree to pay those delivery fees if it meant they could offer x number of free copies. I hope Amazon adjusts this policy in the future.)
By Friday’s Links « WriteByNight's Blog December 10, 2010 - 7:05 AM
[...] Amazon takes steps to correct the issue we touched on last week relating to public domain [...]