Public Domain eBooks Assigned New ASIN Numbers By Amazon

Amazon has recently implemented a new system according to which new ASIN numbers have been assigned to all the books which are in the public domain.

Going by this system, these books would be pushed down in all Amazon searches, regardless of their popularity.

The new system would also invalidate the old listing data on major search engines and hence it would be difficult to locate these books over the internet.

Amazon also removed a large number of classics that fell in the public domain and were published by the retailer before 2011.

These books would be replaced by new books identified by their new ASIN numbers. While Amazon might benefit from this move, it would turn out to be a huge loss for tens of thousands of customer created Listmania lists.

Besides, previous links that maintianed a database of these books would also be devoid of these books now and searching for these books would reach at “Can’t find what you’re looking for.”

This would be mainly because Amazon would not redirect or forward the ASIN numbers of these books to those websites.

Amazon has not yet made clear the reasons behind this decision. On a positive note, this move can be beneficial for new independent and self-published authors since with most of the free eBooks excluded from the top 100 free books lists, doors of opportunity would be opened up for new books that are either free or very cheap.

Particularly, new writers would be able to benefit from Kindle Select or the Digital Text Publishing and offer their eBooks at a very cheap price. The position of such authors on free eBooks charts would also be improved.

However, it would take little time before the public domain eBooks once again gain their previous position and top the free books lists. So if new authors are to benefit from this opportunity, they would need to act soon.