Amazon Kindle Asks Me to Unpublish My Books.

Amazon Kindle sent me an email asking me to remove my books from their website.

Hello,

During a review of your catalog, we found that one or more of your titles contain content that is freely available on the web. Copyright is important to us - we want to make sure that no author or other copyright holder has their work claimed and sold by anyone else.

Playing “Help-Me” in the Style of Sonny Boy Williamson II (ASIN:B004LDLBDW), A Nest of Flames (ASIN:B004GEB31Q)

If, in fact, you are the sole owner of the publishing rights for the books listed above, please provide the URLs for all websites where you have previously published this or any other Kindle content. Please respond within five business days with the requested URLs so we can verify you have the sole publishing rights, or the books will be removed from sale in the Kindle Store. If the content of your book(s) are in the public domain, please confirm this and include the information you used to make this determination.

If you have already unpublished the books listed above, please reply with that information. We ask that you unpublish any other book that closely matches content that is freely available on the web for which you do not hold the sole publishing rights, or whose content is not in the public domain. If we discover any other titles you have submitted fail to comply with these conditions or do not meet our Content Guidelines in any other way, your account may be terminated.

Instructions on how to unpublish your books can be found here: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A36BYK5S7AJ2NQ#3-2_Can_I_remove_content_unpublish

I wrote the books in question. The Book Playing Help-Me in the Style of Sonny Boy Williamson II is based on articles that I wrote for my own websites many years ago. The Story A Nest of Flames was published at Tales of the Talisman Magazine under my copyright and a few years later was posted on my http://www.cthreepo.com website. I wrote the story.

Both books appear for sale at Smashwords, iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and other websites. I have a dozen other books which I am afraid will generate the same email from Amazon Kindle.

I own ALL RIGHTS and I hold the COPYRIGHT for both books and I have every right as the author and owner of the content to publish them.

I have replied to Amazon giving them the links where various versions of the story appear. I am now waiting for their response.

To be continued…

7 Comments

  1. Adam Besvinick wrote:

    Hi, I’m part of the Gumroad.com team; happy to help you get set up selling your content via our platform. Check out our demo here for how simple it is: http://gumroad.com/demo

    Wednesday, June 6, 2012 at 12:03 pm | Permalink
  2. Keith wrote:

    I put a book on your site. It took about 45 seconds to get it going. I am sure there is more to it, but here is the link (I am not sure the javascript part will work in a comment.)
    Frogs in Aspic

    Wednesday, June 6, 2012 at 12:13 pm | Permalink
  3. Adam Besvinick wrote:

    yes, the button works in the comment; you can also share the link on Facebook, Twitter, etc. to drive traffic to your sale page. and that is all you have to do.

    Wednesday, June 6, 2012 at 12:18 pm | Permalink
  4. Adam Besvinick wrote:

    You can also use the modal on your site (gumroad.com/modal)

    Wednesday, June 6, 2012 at 12:20 pm | Permalink
  5. Adam Besvinick wrote:

    feel free to reach out to me over email if I can be helpful

    Wednesday, June 6, 2012 at 1:15 pm | Permalink
  6. Christine wrote:

    I have had the same problem with several of my titles. I argued with them for quite a while, gave up and unpublished.

    Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 7:13 am | Permalink
  7. Keith wrote:

    I argued and won. I used the phrase “I OWN ALL RIGHTS TO THE BOOK #######” several times in the reply email.

    I am a little worried because I published a dozen 99¢ short stories which have previously appeared at various websites, even though I wrote them.

    Keith

    Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 9:02 am | Permalink