Thursday, February 7, 2013

Some books on Amazon and the smell test

So, you see this widget on the left hand side of the page? I'm trying to build what is called an Amazon aStore. You take and create your own take on an online bookstore using Amazon's inventory and order fulfillment. I thought this would be a way to create my own take on a "small" online bookstore with a fannish view of things. One thing I'm doing is providing links and (in the near future) some information on classic science fiction and providing categories for their books currently in print. In the process of doing this I've found some rather interesting things.

Be careful what you buy. I'm not providing names or links because I just don't want to provide even negative publicity for these "publishers". The other night while adding the available books by Robert Silverberg I stumbled across one that made me think "Is this legit?". Scrolling down a bit I saw a post by Silverberg blasting these folks for publishing something that he had let slip into the public domain since he considered it superseded by another book. Tonight I stumbled across a questionable publication of a Theodore Sturgeon book. From what I've been able to tell, it's more than a little likely that while some of this kind of publishing is actually in the public domain, I for one am not interested in supporting someone who is overcharging for someone else's work when I can be pretty sure that the writer's estate isn't seeing a penny.

The Quasi-Official Robert Silverberg Web Site

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