Amazon continues to add new, free public domain titles to the Kindle Store: over 1,700 new free public domain titles in a 24-hours period this week. All of these new public domain titles show "Public Domain Books" as publisher and are, in fact, published by Amazon. The total count is now at 9,130, of which fewer than 70 are newer promotional titles.
My guess is that these would all be titles that would have public domain status throughout the world so that Amazon could use them to augment its Kindle Store offerings for the new International Kindle in each of the 170 or so countries where it will begin shipping its ebook reader October 19.
A few weeks ago I posted the concern—Honey, They’re Shrinking "Free" in the Kindle Store—that Amazon might be abandoning free public domain books in the Kindle Store, because there had not been any new free public domain listings in over six months, and because listings of free promotional titles slowed to a barely recognizable tricking in August and early September. Almost immediately Amazon began to beef up free listings, and today’s new listings are the most dramatic push since last February. I should have known better, of course, because it would be a colossally stupid move to counter Google Books by abandoning free public domain books in the Kindle Store. And Amazon folks are not colossally, or even a little bit, stupid.
Yes, it would be great, if only they were truly free for us Europeans. But they all cost $2.30 in Europe. That “includes VAT & international wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet” but is far from free.
Actually, this is what I feared. Amazon has now cemented a monopoly on Kindle editions of public domain works. And it has begun moving itself more forcefully into a status as ‘publisher.’
A couple questions arise:
1. Having chopped off at the knees so many small-potatoes Gutenberg repackagers, does Amazon still play fair with big publishers of public domain works, like Penguin?
2. Whence come these Amazon-published public domain works? From Project Gutenberg? From Google Books? Or from Amazon’s own scanning and digitizing work, which they only recently revealed in their briefs in the Google Books Consent case?
I guess a third question would be: are these public domain titles any freer of scannos than the Google Books epub editions? (Gadzooks, I hope so!)
For about an hour this afternoon, the prices of all Amazon public domain books went to $2.00 in the US. But only an hour.
Ah, correction. I bought seven books, then the prices all went to $2.00 each. I redid the test tonight, same thing.
It’s Amazon’s way of limiting free book delivery.
Looks like it stays at $2.00 for about 5 minutes, then goes back to free.
Sorry about all these posts.
Just an update here on the original post. The total number of free public domain books in the Kindle Store as of 7 am EDT Monday 10.12.2009 is at 17,955.