Writer Sanctum
Corporate Sector => What are Amazon doing now? [Public] => Topic started by: Bill Hiatt on May 02, 2019, 02:42:14 AM
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I had to laugh. As a US government report, the Mueller Report is public domain in the US. KDP has strict rules on having only one public domain edition available for sale unless there is unique content (translation, annotation, or illustration) which must be identified in the title metadata. https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200743940 (https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200743940). Having something like an introduction explicitly doesn't qualify.
Imagine my surprise to find several different editions of the Mueller report available for sale. Here are a few of them:
Three at $0.99. One has two forewords, one by a Republican and one by a Democrat. Off-hand, it doesn't seem to qualify, but it has a bestseller banner. The second shows the length of the redactions. KDP rules explicitly deny that formatting differences make a work unique, so this one is dubious. The third one has a foreword. Again, it doesn't seem to qualify.
One at $1.99 from Penguin-Random House. It doesn't identify any unique content (in fact, it seems to disclaim having any) and has a publication date later than the three listed above, but I guess its OK because...Big Five.
One at $2.99. It's a print replica that explicitly says it has no other content. I assume someone just took the DOJ-released PDF and made it into a Kindle book. How could that qualify?
Another at $2.99 that appears to be a print replica or close. The TOS identifies no unique content.
Oh, yet another at $2.99, another bestseller that, like some of the others listed above, makes a virtue of having no unique content. The pitch is basically that commentary could bias potential readers. It could--but we only need one edition without commentary, not however many we have.
One at $7.99 from Simon and Schuster. It has not only an introduction by Alan Dershowitz but also "The relevant portions of Title 28 of the Code of Federal Regulations, the 1999 provisions written by former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, which establish and regulate the powers of the special counsel; Rod Rosenstein’s 2016 order appointing Robert Mueller III as special counsel and outlining the scope of his investigation; Attorney General William Barr’s four-page summary of the report, as sent to Congress; Barr's explanation of the four reasons for redacting the report, and a key for identifying them in the color-coded report." OMG (as my students used to say), here's an edition that actually qualifies as having unique content under the KDP rules.
On at $7.99 from the Washington Post. "The only book with exclusive analysis by the Pulitzer Prize–winning staff of The Washington Post, and the most complete and authoritative available." (At least Bezos follows his own rules.)
How many editions are there? I stopped counting at fifty. Some of them are so obviously just the PDF converted to Mobi that the cover is the title page of the report. A few of them offer what might be unique content under the rules, but most don't seem to. Prices range from $0.99 to $14.95. I counted I think five bestseller banners (in different categories, which seemed relevant but were a little "creative") I also notice one on Amazon most read chart and two on the most sold chart--but at least those three are all within the rules.
What's in the first line of sponsored product ads on some of the product pages? Several more editions of the Mueller report, some with newly released labels on them. So not only is Amazon allowing multiple editions without unique content, but at least some of them got approved for AMS ads.
To be fair, it looks as if Amazon got hit with a tidal wave (or is it title wave?) of several of these a day. However, it's clear that there is no effective automated system that checks the submissions to see if they are repetitive public domain works.
Most of the repetitive titles are indie or small press, aside from the Penguin-Random House anomaly. Of course, it's possible many of them didn't look to see if other copies were available before clicking publish, and one of them (whoever was first) would have been entitled to publish anyway. Since several a day were being published, an early submitter might not have seen the several others submitted on the same day. Still, the later ones should have checked.
So yes, some of the folks with editions up needed to do their due diligence. But Amazon should include a check for the same title on public domain submissions and then kick any potential conflicts to manual review.
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I'm just kind of upset that people are selling a report that is available free, because, you know, it's a government document paid for by tax money, ergo sunshine laws and all that. My former journalist self is sad that this is the state of things.
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I'm just kind of upset that people are selling a report that is available free, because, you know, it's a government document paid for by tax money, ergo sunshine laws and all that. My former journalist self is sad that this is the state of things.
Some people make a living selling public domain documents neatly formatted and packaged. I remember buying one myself that only had the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in it. It was a conveniently sized and priced small paperback, suitable for giving to a child.
Edited: Also, I think it was Prentice-Hall that made its fortune on public domain nonfiction. And Dover always did public domain stuff, too. There's a market for it.
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I'm just kind of upset that people are selling a report that is available free, because, you know, it's a government document paid for by tax money, ergo sunshine laws and all that. My former journalist self is sad that this is the state of things.
Some people make a living selling public domain documents neatly formatted and packaged. I remember buying one myself that only had the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in it. It was a conveniently sized and priced small paperback, suitable for giving to a child.
Edited: Also, I think it was Prentice-Hall that made its fortune on public domain nonfiction. And Dover always did public domain stuff, too. There's a market for it.
There is a market for it, but I think DMGuay's point referred specifically to recent documents generated at taxpayer expense.
It certainly wasn't my intent to suggest that there was anything wrong with publishing public domain material in general. As far as the Mueller Report is concerned, my understanding is that the government-issued PDF is difficult to use because it's basically just a facsimile of the print version and therefore hard to search, etc. I can see the utility in someone putting out a more user-friendly version. What I don't see is the need for dozens of people to do basically the same thing.
That's why I believe Amazon should enforce its own policies. If people want to put out editions with extensive unique commentary or background information, that's OK too. What's not OK is this mass of undifferentiated make-a-quick-buck editions that shouldn't theoretically have been allowed.
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Don't get me wrong. I don't think there's anything wrong with publishing it, I'm just sad that as a society people either
-don't want to make the effort
- don't know where to find free government documents
- or don't KNOW they are entitled to them for free as part of a democratic society
That's the part the makes me sad. it's like when 20 somethings say they don't vote because they don't know how and step-by-step instructions weren't on instagram. That kind of anguish!!
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Prentice-Hall was reprinting government documents, all originally funded by our taxes and available to the public.
There is plenty of evidence that most people are too lazy to go out of their way to obtain something they want. That’s why piracy doesn’t completely destroy book sales. When I can buy with one click why bother with a pirate site? But these multiple copies are proof Amazon simply doesn’t have anyone whose job is to pay attention.
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The Mueller Report is 448 pages.
Let's say I want to read it on paper.
I can download it for free and then print it on my own printer for "free."
Except that I have to pay for the paper and the ink.
I looked online and a cartridge of black inkjet ink for a popular printer is $17.99.
The yield is estimated at 200 pages.
So printing the Mueller Report would cost me $40.30, plus the cost of paper.
Looks like a ream of paper (500 sheets) runs about $5.99 online.
If I print on both sides, I'm at $42.98.
And the pages aren't even bound.
If I go to a copy shop, maybe I can get 3¢ copies, which means my cost is $13.44.
But it's still not bound.
Probably going to cost another couple bucks for that.
Meanwhile, there's the time involved in printing or running around town.
Easier and cheaper to order a paperback on Amazon for $8 to $15. No work involved and the pages will be bound like a real book.
Now, if I only wanted an electronic copy, sure, I could download that for free, assuming I don't go over any bandwidth limits I may have, especially if a cell phone is my only Internet.
And then if I want to read it on a Kindle or a Kindle app, well, then I have to sideload it or whatever.
Seems easier to just pay for a Kindle version.
I mean, yes, sure, it only takes a couple seconds to search on a search engine and find the actual, original Mueller Report PDF and download it straight from a government website for free.
But it can be just as fast searching on Amazon and with one-click, it's purchased and sent to my Kindle device or app with no additional effort on my part.
Yes, there are lots of versions on Amazon, but I'll just sort by price, low to high, and pick one of the 99¢ ones.
Or maybe I won't. Maybe I'll just buy the first one that pops up for $7.99.
Kind of depends on how much money I have and how much my time is worth to me.
It's not necessarily laziness or people being too dumb to look or whatever.
Some people value convenience over money.
Some people value time over money.
Just because people might pay for something they could get free doesn't necessarily mean they are getting ripped off.
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Yes, if you wanted a paperback edition instead of an ebook, someone would be doing you a service by printing it. But, unless something's changed, most of the I-just-want-to-make-a-buck undifferentiated editions only came out in ebook format.
Some of the trad editions, by contrast, have audiobooks versions (how did they get them made so fast?), and one has a hardcover.
No, now I'm looking again, and there are a lot of paperback editions, many just in paperback. I don't have time to look closely right now, but it looks like the paperback-only editions are in many cases just as undifferentiated as the ebooks. Well, let's see, one does have illustrations, so technically it might be all right. Well, except that there are no credits on the photos, so one wonders where they came from.
Someone's selling the report on three-hole paper. They should have read your post first.
As I look, the paperback-only editions have a higher percentage of people who tried to do some kind of differentiation, but there are still plenty of completely undifferentiated ones.
One of the editions that is available in kindle, paperback, and hardcover, all facsimile, has the pages presented sideways in the Kindle version. The accompanying one-star review is a complaint about Amazon quality control. Indeed!
In terms of the debate over whether Amazon lets scammers slide sometimes because it's willing to look the other way or because it doesn't devote enough resources to overseeing the KDP division, this is evidence for the latter theory. Amazon would have profited just as much or more from a few good editions as it does from a whole pile of editions that are the same at best and badly put together at worst. The situation makes Amazon look bad without benefitting it in any conceivable way.
I had to smile at the ad at the top of the first few pages, though. It's an Orbis Press ad for books related to the election of Pope Francis. Evidently, the word election triggered the connection. I don't think Orbis is getting it's money's worth. :HB
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You could have read it on your Nook app for free, since it was free at Barnes & Noble. It was also free on Scribd. Surprised Amazon was letting people charge for a book "sold" elsewhere for free. That's supposed to be against the TOS.
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You could have read it on your Nook app for free, since it was free at Barnes & Noble. It was also free on Scribd. Surprised Amazon was letting people charge for a book "sold" elsewhere for free. That's supposed to be against the TOS.
Another good illustration of how no one is paying attention.