Looks like Amazon has decided to do something about people who snag free content from the internet, format it as an ebook and sell it for Kindle. I blogged about this awhile back (http://raw-dog.livejournal.com/245555.html). I figured this kind of thing was behind the email we recently got explaining what type of content is acceptable for publishing on Kindle: content that you have the sole right to publish or content that is in the public domain. We don't steal content so I didn't think we'd have any problems. Today we got an email saying that one of our titles contains content that is freely available on the web and we need to verify our right to publish it. The letter says:
"…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."
I'm a bit mystified about what to do here. The book happens to be a collection of essays, articles and reviews. Many of the pieces have appeared elsewhere on the web and in print. While we don't have sole publishing rights to the material we do have rights to publish the book as a collection of articles. I'm not sure how sending links will verify this right.