PIRATES!!!
C.E. Grundler
The other day I stumbled across something rather surprising – a book listed under the 'BOOKS BY C.E. GRUNDLER'. There it was, right below Last Exit, a nifty little book titled How to Make a Kindle Cover for Less than a Pizza', published back in early November, and it was selling for $2.99. And it had received a mediocre review because though the buyer liked the overall concept, they felt it was 1.) overpriced for such a basic tutorial, and 2.) the pictures didn't even match up with the text.
Hmmm. Okay, let me rephrase that. WTF? I did write something like that, sort of, but it was on my blog, along with several other tutorials, FOR FREE, and the pictures DID line up with the instructions. But this had MY name on it, and when I took a 'Look Inside', sure enough, there were my words, taken directly off my blog, along with my pictures of my tutorial, laid out on my kitchen table, next to my coffee cup while my cat looked on. You can even see my very unusual antique nightlight in the corner and my needlepoint on the wall.
No question, it's MY content. But wait. If people posting reviews, that meant people were buying, which meant… WTF??? It most certainly wasn't on my KDP bookshelf, or my bank account, for that matter.
Someone had the audacity to pirate my work, my pictures, and worst of all, MY NAME! And, to add insult to injury, they'd formatted it poorly, and as a result, were getting negative reviews! Under MY NAME!
I immediately contacted the nice folks over at Amazon and explained the situation. They promptly pulled the offending book, then requested that I forward them documentation to support my claim that the work published under my name was indeed mine, taken and being sold without my permission, which "constitutes copyright infringement". If I recall, when you first publish, there's a whole lot of fine print about how you're not supposed to do that. And it seems Amazon has a Legal Department all set up to address these issues.
So be warned, what you post on a blog today may very well wind up as someone else's 'ebook' tomorrow. I asked Amazon to look at what KDP account these sales were going into, and if they might have been selling books on how to fix leaky decks as well!
On another note, I have the release dates for the Last Exit In New Jersey and No Wake Zone, as well as the new cover design for Last Exit!
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