If book shows up for free download illegally, what actions can we take ?

[Pratik]

Hi,

Once you publish your book, a few days go by and your book (which is not free to buy) starts showing up on few websites as free downloads, what actions can we take as author ?
especially when there is no publisher backing if its self-published ?

Any thoughts/experiences ?

Thanks.

[Kat]

If it's a file-sharing website where users upload the files you have a good chance the owners of the site will disable it if you send them an email.

Not sure how to deal with sites where the owner is the one sharing the file...

[Iffix]

This might help. The same thread was started by someone else here: https://kdp.amazon.com/community/mess...

[Pratik]

Thanks guys, I will try to send them an official message from my side and will see how it goes. As that other thread suggests, i am not going to loose any sleep over this now as most of such sites are scams anyway where normal people don't try to go.

[Charles]

It's a scam, don't bite.

[Micah]

I actually had the opposite issue on Amazon: I had published a free eBook on Smashwords and someone downloaded it and stuck it up on Amazon for $1.49.

The didn't even change the book cover which has my name on it. They didn't publish it on Amazon with an author's name, they listed some bogus company and marked it as "Editor."

An email to Amazon sorted it out. I had checked the Editor's name for other works and found a bunch of other pirated self-pub works...along with an illegal scanned image reproduction of a Star Wars design sketch book! I mean, that's asking for trouble.

The Editor got banned from Amazon, but they just reposted everything (excluding my own book) under a new name.

[R.]

I've found that the bigger companies such as Amazon and Facebook tend to fire from the hip if there's evidence of this sort of thing, Keep googling, if you find an infringement complain, and after the offender has has the site pulled several times they often give up.