Amazon Hides Classic Free Public Domain Ebooks
from the disappointing dept
Via Chris Anderson, we find out that Amazon recently made a big change to the free ebooks it lists on the site, making them much harder to find. The explanation, by Morris Rosenthal, is a bit confusing, but apparently Amazon reassigned ASINs (identification numbers) for most of the public domain classics that were available on the site. In doing so, all of the historical sales info, reviews, comments, etc., were lost. That means that the works, no matter how popular, get pushed way down in searches and in "related" items. It also means tons of links are now dead.Last weekend Amazon removed the vast majority of free classics that they published (adopted from Project Gutenberg) prior to 2011, after replacing them with the same books using new ASIN’s, meaning new product pages. In doing so, Amazon orphaned millions of links from the web, which now arrive at a “Can’t find what you’re looking for” page, not to mentions tens of thousands of customer created Listmania lists, So You’d Like To guides and Customer Discussions. They are orphaned because Amazon does not redirect, or forward the ASIN’s of eBooks removed from their catalog.Rosenthal doesn't think there's anything nefarious going on here -- just a sign of a company that doesn't much care about these public domain works. His post also explains some of the wider impact, including how certain related items results are pointing people to fee-based versions of authors' works, rather than free public domain ones. Obviously, such a result could be seen to benefit Amazon, since Amazon is more likely to make money by pushing you to fee-based books instead of free ones.
A major side effect, if not prime effect, of changing all of those ASIN’s, is the loss of their historical sales data. In other words, a customer going to the Kindle store and searching for Jane Austen would once have gotten back a list that started off with free editions of her most popular works, starting with Pride and Prejudice. This morning, the only free Austen book appearing in the first page of the search results is “Love and Friendship”, certainly not her most popular title, but there because it hasn’t been updated since 2006.
There is one silver lining he notes: for those who go straight to the "top free" list of books, most of those old public domain books have disappeared from the list, meaning that newer free books are now more prominent -- and that's not necessarily a bad thing. But, to take all those other classics and effectively hide them seems like a big mistake.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: ebooks, free, kindle, public domain
Companies: amazon
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sad
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
And the $1 public domain publishers rejoice...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Pirate them
I know it will impact on the sale of new books but in all honesty there is enough literacy out there that is free to keep everyone reading for there lifetime. If new authors want to compete they would have to give a reason for people to pay, more than just saying it is our right to make money from creating content.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Pirate them
You probably could get a valid patent for that. I mean, no one else has been able to do that ever.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Pirate them
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Pirate them
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Pirate them
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Pirate them
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Pirate them
Never mind that the broad story lines of Romeo & Juliet, Henry V, The Scottish Play, Taming of the Shrew among others have been copied and reproduced countless times on Prime Time TV and in the movies. Twelfth Night is probably a bit to risqu� for them :) It's a good thing copyright didn't exist then. Some cases would probably still be in the courts some 600 years later. :)
To get back to what Amazon itself has done. Let's just call it what it is. Damned stupid to wipe out an entire shelving sector, artificial though it is. Even if it was an accident, which I'm far from saying it is.
It's one of these good will things. Something that will aggrivate people more and more until it becomes something mythological where people will text one another saying that if they did it to some of the world's greatest literature then what's next? Stephen King? That doesn't need any facts just boiling aggrivation.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Pirate them
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Type, er, typo
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Just use OokaBooka + calibre
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
use Amazon Advanced Search
2) Sort Results by: Price - Low to High.
The free Kindle books come up first.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: use Amazon Advanced Search
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Um...why even bother with Amazon?
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2010/11/amazon_charges_kindle_users_fo .html
Support your local Public Domain supplier.
http://gutenberg.ca/
http://gutenberg.org/
While I'm at it:
http://librivox.org
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Um...why even bother with Amazon?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Um...why even bother with Amazon?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I just downloaded that last one, looks like an interesting historic document/pamphlet (34 pages).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Superficial Annoyance
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Quality issue
I must say quality may be something important in that case too.
Quite recently, Amazon announced they won't sell files generated with Calibre any longer, and Calibre's dev answered he sort of understood this decision as he admits Calibre's KF8 (new Kindle format) conversion is pretty bad. But Apple is focusing on quality too. If there is one single problem in the file, e.g. a picture sliced/displayed on two pages in reflowable text, then they reject your book.
Now, I've tried a dozen of their classics (and Guntenberg classics elsewhere) and I must say the formatting of those files is disastrous. I know we're talking about benevolents in this case� but it's high time they tackle this problem and consider improving the quality of the formatting they are doing, especially as more and more people are complaining about bad quality. Sometimes they even thank publishers selling classics at a fair price tag because they encountered a terrible reading experience with a free classic from Gutenberg.
I know some will say "it's all about content, stupid" and I disagree. Typography is one important thing since it facilitates reading. Hence, if formatting is bad, readers can't focus on content. At best, typography is transparent, you can't even see it. That's because the designer made a wonderful job and nothing can be felt as an obstacle. So there is nothing you can notice as everything is smooth.
Now, with classics you get :
- chapters starting at the middle of the page
- First chapter starting right after front-matter (same screen-page)
- sometimes "indent method" and "block method" used at the same time (which has been proven the most terrible mistake one could do in book design centuries ago)
- whitespace between chapters using line breaks (which has been proven the most terrible mistake one could do in ebook formatting years ago and you will find this is strongly discouraged in any ebook-formatting guidelines available in the universe)
- etc.
And that's just a matter of making "best practices" available to benevolents. This problem could be solved quite easily.
I'm not criticizing benevolents, they are doing a terrific job and show some huge love for literature. But, that's also a huge issue they should tackle sooner than later. Macro-typography is something really simple (they can even use default styles). And e-books are no reason why we shall forget macro-typography, something we know is absolutely necessary so that readers can focus on content and enjoy reading.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Thanks amazon...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Gutenberg's enemies just called from the 15th Century. They want their silly argument back immediately -- the printing press must be destroyed, who's with 'em!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Get Free eBooks!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Public domain ebo
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Well, good!
Public domain publishers are a LEGITIMATE and HONEST business, and you want to ruin everything for them because you don't give a shit.
Fuck you!
Go to Hell.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]