Yesterday I got an email from KDP, Amazon’s publishing platform.
During our review, we found that the following book(s) contains content for which you may not hold the necessary rights. Some or all of the content within your book(s) is freely available on the internet. As a Baby Duck Listens to Thunder: A Foreign Expert in English, Guangzhou China, 1982-83 by Kennedy, Martha (AUTHOR)
At first I thought (grad student forever) they were impugning my citations. How dare they! I taught that shit! I lived by it! Then I realized that they must have a bot searching that vast wilderness of words, the internet, and it found my blog.
God forbid I compete with myself, right? I responded that it was my blog and that I’d removed the posts (yesterday). A double problem for them — I imagine there are authors who steal the work of bloggers and I can also see they wouldn’t want to go to the expense of publishing a book that no one has to buy to read it.
I hope this will help someone out. I know many people write blogs with the thought of someday turning the blog into a book. Of course there’s the chance I’m the one person in the universe who didn’t know this.
Update: I got this message this morning. I guess I cleared everything up.
Thanks for your message regarding the following book:
As a Baby Duck Listens to Thunder: A Foreign Expert in English, Guangzhou China, 1982-83 ID: 32561303
Your book is currently live and available for purchase. Check out the detail page to check the status:
***
P.S. KDP stands for Kindle Direct Publishing that was once Amazon’s e-book publication interface. They had another for paper books, Createspace. They’ve combined the two under KDP. It works well, has become easier to use and has a wide reach (obviously).
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/06/23/rdp-sunday-help/
I certainly didn’t know that you couldn’t use your own words in your own books:)
They just ask you to go back to the platform and let them know you own the words. It’s good they check, though.
Yes, it is good that they check.
On the other hand, it’s good to see that they do carry out these checks. But if you are self-publishing on their platform, does it matter that a small amount of text is on a blog, especially if you use your blog to promote your book?
I think it’s a good thing, but their message was so vague it took a minute to figure out what they meant. In my case it was MORE than a small amount of text.
KDP just asks you to go back to the publishing site and make sure you check “I have the copy right to this stuff” and /or email them an explanation. I did that. So far I’ve heard nothing in response.
Awesome to see, Martha!
❤
Congratulations!
When I click the link “Free preview” I get a message saying “We’re sorry. This preview is not available yet.” 😦
I have to get the book now.
It’s supposed to be available on 7/15 when the paper back is ready 😀
So glad they responded quickly! 😳 PS- I’ve followed your blog a million times, but every time I go to read a post of yours, it shows that I’m not following it. I’m not exactly sure why it’s happening, but I know other bloggers are having the same issues. It’s probably happening on my site too. 🤷♀️
I have a similar problem with yours. WP makes it very challenging for me to like or comment. 😦
It’s frustrating. 🙄
Yep. We’ll always have Twitter 😉
Very true! Twitter seems to be consistent 😂
😀
And, congrats on the book too! ❤️
Thank you! 🙂