Copyright Confusion Means You Get Free E-books

Memoirs of a French Courtesan is a four-volume set of books written by a woman known as Céleste Mogador and published in 1858. There is a two-volume set that she published a few years earlier; like any savvy author, she capitalized on its success and released an expanded edition.

I've been translating the four-volume edition for the past couple of years and publishing the books as I complete them, like a series. Books one and two are out, book three is out May 13, 2025 (you can pre-order it if you like), and I'm working on book four, which should be on bookstore shelves in time for the holidays this year. I think I'm the first to translate this four-volume edition to English.

Since 1858 is firmly in public domain territory by either French or American standards, I'm able to use the source material to create a translation. My own translation, being a new creative work, is copyrighted with the Library of Congress.

However, the service I use to make my ebooks widely available does not allow public domain works in its system. When I've inquired, I've been told that the outlets that use this service for indie ebooks like mine, such as Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and others, have restrictions on public domain titles. I assume this is due to shoddy versions of public domain works being created in the past and even shoddier AI versions being created now, which I get. I don't like them clogging up ebook stores either.

I work very diligently to translate using only my brain (and a dictionary when I come across a nineteenth-century term I do not know) and to create well-designed paperbacks and ebooks for readers. I can't seem to find a route to proving this to the service I use, so it doesn't add my ebook translations to the online shops where people usually buy ebooks. And that means no one buys the ebooks of Memoirs of a French Courtesan.

My frustration is your gain, however. Since no one can easily find and buy these ebooks anyway, I'm giving them away for free for awhile. You can find free ebooks of both Volume 1: Rebellion and Volume 2: Spectacle on the Practical Fox website: www.practicalfox.com. They'll be free until Volume 3: Luck comes out May 13, and both epub and pdf files are included in the download. The paperbacks are on the Practical Fox site too, but you can easily find the paperbacks pretty much anywhere you buy books. You can even order them from your local bookstore if they don't have them in stock.

That's all. Go download some free books. They make great spring reading, really.