Fantasy Aficionados discussion

I just read this post and I had to share:
http://allonbooks-thekingdomofallon.b...
Did you know about it?

Wow. That's horrible but I'm not surprised. Amazon is trying to own the world and this is only a small part.

I stopped reviewing on Amazon (except the occasional product review and almost never books) because I don't want to give them any value add.

Dang! Thank you for posting that since I'd hate for Amazon to have ownership over my reviews.

That's disturbing to me as well. Anyone have any thoughts about cross posting? If I really enjoy a book I try to cross post as much as I can and promote the book with my thoughts. If I cross post a review that I put on Amazon at Goodreads for example, I am sure the author can use it? Can they?

Lily wrote: "That's disturbing to me as well. Anyone have any thoughts about cross posting? If I really enjoy a book I try to cross post as much as I can and promote the book with my thoughts. If I cross post a..."

Not sure. If I read that correctly, the writer also no longer has copyright of the work. So, technically, Amazon can do what they want.

MrsJoseph wrote: "If I read that correctly, the writer also no longer has copyright of the work. So, technically, Amazon can do what they want. "

That's how I understand this post as well. And I trust the writer who wrote it. She usually has correct info.

Well, I certainly won't test that theory after reading this article. It would be a shame to promote a book you love and the author hits a wall with being able to use that. After all, I don't take time out of my schedule to put my thoughts and opinions to paper just so Amazon can dictate how it is to be used... that's ridiculous!

I think I will take the advice on that article, and just star rate it on Amazon, and leave my reviews on websites that are reasonable to their readers AND authors.

Thank you for the post and bringing this to attention. What a shame!

I wonder: who owns book reviews on GR?

Hmmmm good question

So this is simply not true. Both Amazon and Goodreads publish their terms of service, they have very similar policies.

Neither Amazon nor Goodreads owns the copyright to a review that you post on the site.

By posting a review on either site, you give the site a non-exclusive license that allows them to do basically whatever they want with a review, but it does not, in any way, limit other things that you can do with that review. So if an author, publisher, or anybody else wants to use a review that you posted on Amazon or Goodreads, you can give permission for them to do so. Because of the license you give to the site, the site could also give authors and publishers permission to do so, whether you want them to or not.

Here are the relevant policies from each site--both are accessible from the respective site's main page:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custome...

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/about/terms

Thanks Jeff. I did re-read the policy. That being said, if you review the community and profile guidelines, it does specify the information in the "All-on Writing" article posted in the beginning of this thread.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custome...

I think the best thing to do is to clarify with Amazon directly as to their legal interpretation of their limitation clauses in the community guideline.

Hopefully I will receive a response.

Copyright can only be transferred in this manner by a written agreement signed by the copyright holder (in this case, the creation of the review).

So the idea that Amazon or Goodreads owns your copyright is mistaken. What the sites have is a license, as mentioned above.

Honestly, I'm not sure the author of the blog post is reading any of this right. I looked at the page she linked, and I'm not seeing it.

Amazon can write everything they want in their terms of use, there's just no way you can sign away your rights to something you wrote without actually signing a binding contract. Clicking 'I agree' on a website is not a binding contract.

Clicking "I agree" on a web site can be a binding contract, but not for Copyright transfer.

Olga wrote: "I wonder: who owns book reviews on GR?"

I do know you own your book reviews on GR. GR often uses your book reviews for advertising/cross posting - but you can revoke that permission in your profile.

I can't speak about Amazon - but they are pretty shady and I don't trust them. While they may not be able to keep your copyright...I don't see any of us with the legal/financial to fight them.

Fighting Amazon would be expensive, the question here is whether there is anything to fight over. I followed the blogger's link, and I just don't see that Amazon even claims to do what the blogger is saying, so I don't think there would be a fight in the first place.

Out of curiosity, what are your other reasons for distrusting Amazon?

R.Scott I agree with you. Re-reading the entire document under community Guidelines, I am not sure if I agree with the interpretation. It seems that those guidelines are just referring to profile conduct, and not sure they are geared towards review content itself and how it can be used.

Just the same, I asked Amazon to clarify. Doesn't hurt.

Lily - post here and tell us what they say :)

It looks to me like they're dictating terms of use of the Amazon.com site only (the "Service"), not what occurs outside of it.

Jeff wrote: "Out of curiosity, what are your other reasons for distrusting Amazon?"

I follow mobile reading technology news - all of it. So, there's a pretty extensive list. I'll give you my top reasons:

- 1984
- Author exclusive contracts
- The kindle only lending library
- .mobi DRM being incompatible with any reader software except Amazon (All the others can be read using ADE)
- requiring Overdrive to send library fulfillment through Amazon servers - and then marketing those books to the user. This has caused additional publishers to pull out of Overdrive.

R. Scott wrote: "Lily - post here and tell us what they say :)



Will definitely do that.

I agree with Jeff's interpretation. They do not own the copyright of your review.

The 1984 issue was really overblown in my opinion, I see why it bothered many people. But in my view of the law I think the reaction it engendered was more of a domino effect and incorrect information. Here is a decent summary of it: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/tec... Ultimately, it pertained to a vendor not having the copyright to sell a book. Amazon offered all of the customers a gift certificate equivalent to the price of the book.

I do have issues with monopolies and exclusive contracts, so I get the problems people have with Amazon and why people are concerned. But the copyright issue and the 1984 issue seems to be gain notoriety and spread around the internet without all the facts. There are plenty of other reasons to bash Amazon in my opinion!

Regina wrote: "I agree with Jeff's interpretation. They do not own the copyright of your review.

The 1984 issue was really overblown in my opinion, I see why it bothered many people. But in my view of the law ..."

I know the facts of the situation very well. I can't speak for how others feel about it.

What I don't like is that Amazon - after stating specifically that they would never go into someone's kindle and remove items - did exactly that.

They did not contact customers first, send out an email, nothing. They just did it. That is not an admirable action and one I can not support. It's disgusting in my opinion.

It is not the customer's fault that Amazon did not do their due diligence.

I agree they should have contacted the customers, I also respect that they have acknowledged their mistake. If a person or entity acknowledges a mistake and agrees to not do it again, then I respect that and will not hold it against them.

Regina wrote: "I agree they should have contacted the customers, I also respect that they have acknowledged their mistake. If a person or entity acknowledges a mistake and agrees to not do it again, then I respe..."

They got sued. They always acknowledge their mistakes when they are legally forced to do so. I see that as being sorry that they got caught.

I disagree which is cool. I think it is good to keep the heat on and question large businesses. I think my line of business provides me with a different perspective of what went down and their reaction to it. Not that my reaction is right. Just different.

I'm not bothered by ppl buying from them - I'm just sick of their actions. Plus I follow all the news and it's...distressing as a consumer. I worry about the future of book buying as I am a huge reader & buyer of books. I feel like my purchasing power in the future is at stake.

I've also known people to have their entire library to get taken when their account was closed. Things like that horrify me.

But don't get me wrong - I don't just boycott them. I also refuse to buy Agency6 ebooks - I only buy used DTBs if I need my fix. I am one to vote with my money.

That is great. I usually do in all respects of my life, but I haven't been bothered yet enough about books and publishing to do that or perhaps my addiction is too great.

I have heard of people having their library taken away too, under what circumstances have you heard about people losing accessing to their libraries?

Here is the response from Amazon. I believe that they run into a problem with enforcement though, when the review is cross posted. They can't enforce it if the review is not exclusively on their site.

I will welcome any suggestions for a response to their reply.

"Hello Lily,

When you submit a review to Amazon.com, you grant us non-exclusive, perpetual license to post the content on Amazon.com. You retain the right to post and use your material on other sites and in other formats.

In regards to authors using reviews on other sites, please know that this type of activity is not endorsed by Amazon and is prohibited by our Terms and Conditions except in certain situations. We would need to know which website(s) would be involved in using the review(s) before we can make a decision. "

Lily wrote: "Here is the response from Amazon. I believe that they run into a problem with enforcement though, when the review is cross posted. They can't enforce it if the review is not exclusively on their si..."

I still don't like the way that sounds at all. But at least its better than what I got from the blog post.

Lily:

That's what I expected regarding the copyright. As I said, copyright can't be transferred except by a written agreement signed by the author, so the idea that they owned copyright in a review you post didn't make much sense.

As for the second part, they may be worried about getting caught up in the middle of a copyright dispute between an author and reviewer. That would be interesting to look into further.

I've dealt with Amazon legal counsel before, and they're not that bad. At least, not with respect to the issues I was involved in (copyright).

Regina wrote: "That is great. I usually do in all respects of my life, but I haven't been bothered yet enough about books and publishing to do that or perhaps my addiction is too great.

I have heard of people h..."

I've only personally know two people to have this problem.

The 1st person was contacted by amazon and told that there had been some strangeness in his account. They felt someone had tried to break into his account and for his safety they shut his account down. Without his account...no access to his ebooks (your kindle account is attached to your amazon - he said his kindle was basically emptied as soon as the wifi connected. I don't have akindle so I can't verify). He was given a giftcard of $1k and they asked him to open a new account...and that he could use the giftcard to rebuy his books. But they didn't give him a book list or anything. He was PISSED cause the $1k was nothing compared to the fact he had not cataloged his library with them. He trusted his access too much.

I would have lost my ever-loving mind. And I love Calibre. http://calibre-ebook.com/ They rock. If you have ebooks...find some de-drm tools, rip the DRM and back them up often. Calibre does not remove DRM but it can catalog and store your ebooks if they have no DRM. It also allows you to read your ebooks and you can push them through to your smart phone to read on the go.


The 2nd person was told she tried to download too many copies of some of the books she'd purchased. She also had some books in her digital library they'd yanked due to content (erotica) and she complained quite a lot about that. She suddenly found herself locked out of her account and had no access. She says it was due to the complaining about the yanked content.

I've had an Amazon account for years...I want to say 2007 and a Prime account since 2009. I can't say that I don't buy anything from them. I get a lot of my used books from them since there's no used bookstore anywhere near me. I don't buy any ebooks from them, however. I don't want them to have that kind of power over me...and I hate golden handcuffs.

Mrs. Joseph, you have made me rethink how much I buy from Amazon in e-format. I never really thought of the possibilities of losing my library if something happened to my account.
I have calibre, so I will look into your suggestions in order to protect my purchases with backup methods. Thank you!

The Kindle stores books locally. You can back the books up on your computer. I haven't had a problem with losing any books so far. I even gave my first Kindle to a friend, and the books I had on it remained on it after I de-authorized the Kindle from my account.

I think people do have the odd problem here and there, but when you think of the number of eReaders on the market, it seems like a very small percentage indeed.

K thanks R.Scott, I will look into backing them up on my computer as well. I have a pretty big library on queue to upload, so I will upload them all today, and back my device library on my computer.

All,
Please note that I received confirmation from amazon.com that reviewers retain the ownership of their reviews. Therefore, if I give permission to an author to use my review for promotional purposes, they have no grounds to pursue any action against an author.

I will continue to crosspost on Amazon now that I am satisfied with the response. However, I think that I will add a blurb that it is a cross posted review and that the author has my permission to use the review. If Amazon doesn't like that, they can let me know.

Thanks for posting the article Olga. It's good to stay on top of this stuff.

Thanks,Lily and everyone. You rock, folks. I know so much more now than I had before this thread.

I really don't think this is as much of a problem as it's been made out to be. Most people who review books on Amazon regularly also post their reviews elsewhere - Goodreads or similar, or on their own blog. So authors generally have a non-Amazon option for quoting from reviews (although they should always get the reviewer's permission first, naturally).

I second the recommendation to use Calibre to catalogue and back up your ebooks. And you can get a plug-in to remove the DRM when importing into Calibre, for those who want to read their books on alternative devices.

Pauline wrote: "I second the recommendation to use Calibre to catalogue and back up your ebooks. And you can get a plug-in to remove the DRM when importing into Calibre, for those who want to read their books on alternative devices. "

Calibre rocks. I don't know how I read ebooks before Calibre (I've been reading ebooks since .LIT, lol). Calibre is...just wonderful.

I really hate that company that tried to use the calibre system and code with a skin to "make it pretty" and it made me go donate more money to calibre. I love the fact that you can just get into so much detail with Calibre. But it's more powerful than I can use (not too much of a techie here). And the fact that you can make your own books in calibre is...wonderful! Plus it's free! Add that to Sigil... :-D

Calibre is awesome.
MrsJoseph, it isn't only Amazon with the exclusive rights for authors. Did you see the recent issue with Apple? If you created a book in Ibooks, they basically owned it for life. There was such an uproar they recently changed the wording to specify they only own that file type. Apple's issue
The problem with Amazon at the moment is if you're an independent author, the majority of your sales, some 95% or better is from kindle. At some point you feel like you need to go with the flow until one of these other big companies step up and provide as good an outlet as Amazon does.

Terry wrote: "Calibre is awesome.
MrsJoseph, it isn't only Amazon with the exclusive rights for authors. Did you see the recent issue with Apple? If you created a book in Ibooks, they basically owned it for lif..."

Yeah, I read about that. I was super angry about it as well but later...they did change it so that there were not exclusivity with the exception of the file type. Since the file type is only operable on iThings...well, it's not as bad.

ETA: I'm all up in the mobile reading news, lol. It drives hubby crazy but I keep up with this stuff almost real time. The crap-storm apple created with iBooks Author was amazing but they backtracked pretty quickly.

Here's the thing about amazon and their exclusive contracts...they are going to screw you over sooner or later.

There is an author in one of my other groups who was selling rather well with an Amazon exclusive contract. Her sales tapered off and she couldn't find out why. She finally found out that Amazon filtered out her book. Period. She can't do anything about it and her book cannot be located via any search at all. She's begging and pleading for amazon to unfilter her book but so far they are resisting.

She can't sell it herself because of the contract. It's her only book and there goes her writing income. She said once her contract is up she'll have to pull the book. She wants to try to resubmit (not a good idea IMO) but not for exclusive - hoping that Amazon sales will pick back up.

That's crazy to me. She's saying that she's been talking to other authors and found out it's not just happening to her - she's just been the most vocal about it so far.

It all goes back to power...and who has the most of it, I guess.