Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

I've recently run into a lot old, free books that are being republished by a variety of companies on Amazon. From what I can tell, they're not doing anything worthwhile & it's been a real pain in the neck as they break series, screw up default descriptions, & otherwise mess with the books. Anyone else notice it?

If books are in the public domain any one can publish a new edition of them. It has nothing to do with Amazon.

OK, they can, but it's still a scam & a PITA. It does have something to do with Amazon since their books are automatically imported into the GR library & it is messing up existing books.

For instance, I've been listening to the Librivox "Short Science Fiction Collection vol. 00x" collections of short stories. When I listened to the first a couple of months ago, it was part of a series with the Librivox edition & description as the primary. It worked that way for 2 & 3, but suddenly there was no Librivox edition for the 4th & the series was gone.

I had to contact GR support to get the series recreated 2 weeks ago. They did so & I spent a few minutes putting them all back in the series as well as in proper order. I just listened to the 5th & found the series gone again. Again, there wasn't a Librivox edition, so I had to add one & I've contacted support again to add the series. Hopefully they'll get it locked down this time.

I just listened to Sentiment, Inc. & had to add the Librivox edition. There was no Gutenberg.org edition either even though that's what was there originally. A lot of scammers have editions. One was charging $3.99 for the Kindle edition.

I hate to see them doing this, both for the hassle & because it detracts from some great organizations.

Jim wrote: "For instance, I've been listening to the Librivox "Short Science Fiction Collection vol. 00x" collections of short stories. When I listened to the first a couple of months ago, it was part of a series with the Librivox edition & description as the primary. ..."

I think this is more a problem with some Goodreads Librarians who get their kicks removing listings they don't consider "real books".

Kindle publishing has resulted in a lot of dreck, including people publishing Wikipedia articles as books. I think mostly they expect to make a few coins from Kindle Unlimited people who, since they can read it for free, don't mind so much.

Hmmm... I guess that is possible - the librarians. I didn't see anything in the change logs to indicate that. Hopefully GR support will figure it out & spank them if it is.

Wikipedia entries as books? SMH