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According to https://wordsrated.com/self-published-book-sales-statistics/, 300 million self-published books are sold each year.

I am thinking about, in the future, uploading (i.e., self-publishing) two books to Amazon:

(i) One that I re-typeset that I believe is in the public domain.

(ii) One that I composed myself.

I don't know who will appear as the publisher---perhaps, say, "ABC publishing" (if Amazon allows me to insert a name) or Kindle Direct Publishing.

In any case, I am wondering if either I or KDP Amazon could get sued if, say, (i) someone wanted to contest my assertion that the first book is in the public domain; or, (ii) if someone did not like what I wrote in the second case and wanted to sue for whatever reason?

Reasonably, can such occur; and if so, who would get sued---me or Amazon? If me, how may I protect myself?

I would like to make the books available to the French and United States markets.

DDS
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1 Answers1

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The vendor has available the DMCA safe harbor provisions if you decides to infringe someone else's book – the copyright owner notifies them that they don't have the copyright holder's permission, so they take the book down (independently the copyright owner sues you for infringement). There is a complicated procedure where they contact Amazon, Amazon tell you you've been accused of infringement and they take it down, they you can counter-claim that you have the right to distribute the book, then the owner files a suit against you). If Amazon doesn't comply with the DMCA formalities, they can be sued for contributory infringement. However: the copyright owner is the only person empowered to legally object – simply asserting that a book is "not in the public domain" carries no legal weight.

If you are the copyright holder, but someone doesn't like what they can say, they can't do anything about it legally unless what you wrote is defamatory or is "illegal for you to publish" (you publish a fact that you cannot publish under a non-disclosure agreement; it constitutes a gross invasion of privacy...). The "whatever reason" matters very much. The consequence for you is that you will get sues and have to pay a bunch of money, plus the court will probably prevent any further distribution of the book. There are other sanctions in France, which I don't address here, for instance there are laws against publishing racist insults in France that don't exist in the US.

user6726
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