Amazon, Kindle and Bible copyrights
The ever-strange Washington Times carries commentary on Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader. Fred Reed raises the question about the problems of selling e-book content that is in the public domain. While it’s within Amazon’s business model to sell an “e” edition of a work published by a company, what happens when one charges for a work in the public domain?
From the article:
Kindle is close to being mass marketable. However, the economics seem hazardous for Amazon. The company makes money, legitimately enough, by selling physical books that are out of copyright. If you want your child to read “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” Amazon will sell you a copy. I don’t know what proportion of a bookseller’s income derives from the sale of books in the public domain, but it has to be considerable — the Bible, the classics and so on.
Reed glosses over the concept that the Bible is in the public domain. It is not. Particular translations of the Bible have copyrights applied to them. The (New) Revised Standard Version is held in copyright by the National Council of Churches. The English Standard Version is held by a division of Good News Publishers. The New American Bible by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Specific publishings of study Bibles are also held in copyright. My HarperCollins Study Bible is the NRSV. The Biblical text is copyright by the NCC and the support material held by HaperCollins, itself a holding of News Corporation.
In the US, only the King James Version is held in the public domain. For the UK, the King James Version is held in perpetual Crown Copyright and not public domain. I’m no copyright expert and won’t touch this one with a ten-foot pole.
So, don’t worry about Amazon raking in money based on Kindle “e” editions of the Bible. They will be paying out big bucks to the publishers and holding companies for the right to distribute particular translations and editions.
February 15, 2008 at 4:26 pm
The whole concept of the article is flawed even besides the Bible part. There are plenty of sites that sell e-books in the mobipocket format kindle is compatible with, one or two even accessible from the Kindle (mobile versions of manybooks and feedbooks.)
I bought the KJV Bible for Kindle because it was $0.99, even though it’s not my favorite version. Could probably have got it for free in a compatible format online.
February 15, 2008 at 4:50 pm
I’d agree that the article is flawed. This is from the Washington Times, which is known for its strange associations. I’m not really up on the details of the Kindle, so it’s good to hear about the availability of e-books from other sites. I was under the impression that Amazon got a monopoly on Kindle e-books.
My interest is more in the way that copyright is applied to Bible translations, so that’s what got my eye about this story.
March 11, 2008 at 4:23 am
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August 8, 2008 at 11:36 am
Just one correction–the KJV is not the only non-copyrighted version in the U.S. There are plenty of others (though not much in the area of modern versions): The American Standard Version, the Douai-Rheims Version, the Catholic Public Domain Version, the Darby Bible, the Revised Version, the World English Bible, etc., etc.
The issue is not a lack of public domain texts, it’s just that almost all the texts (with the exception of the World English Bible and possibly a few others) are quite archaic.
February 23, 2009 at 11:10 pm
the Kindle reminds me of something i saw in an old school Star Trek episode; and it’s so thin!
October 20, 2009 at 10:12 am
There is nothing wrong with charging for public domain books. Each electronic PD book that is sold has ten copies that are available for free on the Internet. The non-free version must do something extra in order to attract attention.
For example, there are hundreds versions of the KJV Bible available for free in different formats on the Internet. Yet, we have just released what we believe is the most useful electronic Bible currently available on the Kindle for $1.99. Why? Because we spent an unbelievable amount of time to make it better to navigate, to preserve original formatting and footnotes, etc. We have come up with the Direct Verse Jump navigation method that makes it more useful than any other free or non-free electronic copy. We did this for ourselves, yet made it available for others.
To read more about this KJV version and to get a free sample, please visit:
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=631067
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