Author of Free Book Upset Others are Re-Selling It

Don’t Buy My Book, Just Read It, in the New York Times, reports on the curious complaint of Seth Godin. He wrote a book and released it for free — under a Creative Commons license which allowed for commercial reproduction. One publisher is taking advantage of this for-profit distribution license and selling the book via Amazon, and Mr. Godin feels slighted. Read his blog for the latest.

February 22, 2007 by Uncategorized 4

You may also like...

4 Responses

  1. hollysue says:
    February 22, 2007 at 10:22 pm

    It’s not that they’re selling it…
    The problem he had with it was that they were marketing it as a NEW book by Seth Godin. Amazon had sent out an email advertising it as his new book; he really does have a new book coming out this year, and didn’t want people to be fooled by a printing of an e-book he released a couple years ago. The publisher has since changed the cover at his request.

    Reply
  2. Walt says:
    February 22, 2007 at 11:13 pm

    Re:It’s not that they’re selling it…
    I see two things here:

    1. Seth Godin just got a bunch of free publicity for his “real” new book.

    2. Unless he’s actually registered his name as a trademark, he’s making a really questionable claim–or was, before the publisher changed the cover.

    The real lesson: If you use a Creative Commons license, be sure to pay attention to what you’re licensing–and don’t complain when someone takes you up on it. I use BY-NC precisely because I don’t want my stuff turning up in someone else’s for-money publication without knowing about it. If I used BY alone, I’d be explicitly saying “You’re free to publish this and take all the profit.”

    Reply
  3. hollysue says:
    February 22, 2007 at 11:28 pm

    Re:It’s not that they’re selling it…
    Agreed. I bet any further e-books Seth does have a different CC license now. And, yeah, nice free publicity.

    Reply
  4. Biblia, the Warrior says:
    February 24, 2007 at 4:57 am

    Third party profiteering from authors’ “free” IP
    Who is surprised? This has been occurring for years; anyone who has ever written anything for a journal (and that’s many, many library folk) – whether they received an honorarium or not – should check around and see the number of people who are re-selling their stuff. More information at http://warriorlibrarian.com/LIBRARY/shell_game.pdf

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

LISNews Archives