Indie Authors Monthly Magazine For Authors and Readers discussion
Books being pirated and offered on Facebook
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C.M.J.
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Jul 29, 2013 07:15AM
Indie authors beware! The Facebook site Read Online Stories and Books is pirating indie authors' books and offering them for free download. I checked the site to see whether it's true, and it apparently is.
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The interesting thing is that I checked the site just to see and one, they apparently can't spell "fantasy" right and two, my virus protection went off and I did nothing but go to the site to see what was happening. I hate to know what other icky stuff is being downloaded by anyone using the site to download books.
The whole thing is disgusting. And that's not the only misspelling, by all accounts.
I have a few free hours this morning, so I'm going down a list and contacting authors. One of whom is EL James (for her, I contacted her agent). No one should be allowed to do such a thing.
Thanks, Elaina. With any luck, the page will be down before the end of the week.
We all need to report this site to Facebook. You can find the report link by clicking on the arrow next to the gear at the top of the page.
Absolutely right, Dante. Post the heck out of it on all your sites and GR groups.
I am a member of ASMSG on facebook I posted it on their facebook page and a few of the other groups that I am involved with there. That should get the ball rolling on getting them the boot.
Since the blogger site is based in India, it'll be harder for legal action to be taken except by the bigger names with the bigger publishing houses. It's why I concentrated on publishers first - Harper Collins' Impulse Imprint, EL James' agent, John Scalzi (have him on twitter so contacted him directly, he forwarded the info), Ellora's Cave, etc. These companies/authors have the resources independents don't have, though they can petition Google to remove the site as the copyright holders, to bring legal action onto those running the site.That's my hope, anyway.
At the risk of sounding stupid, how are they getting copies of the books?
Is there an easy way to find out what books are on there or do you just have to scroll through them all?
this is the fb in question, NOT mine!!!
Jason wrote: "Is there an easy way to find out what books are on there or do you just have to scroll through them all?"As far as I can tell, you have to scroll through them.
Donna, I don't know how they're getting the copies.
Elaina, thanks so much for doing what you've done.
And on a final lovely note, I just got a notice that Facebook did not remove the page. Here's their response: "Thank you for taking the time to report something that you feel may violate our Community Standards. Reports like yours are an important part of making Facebook a safe and welcoming environment. We reviewed the page you reported for containing theft or vandalism and found it doesn't violate our community standard on theft or vandalism."
Unbelievable.
Facebook leaves a lot of sites up that should be taken down, such as the pro-rape pages, racist pages, etc. Their excuses run the range of free speech to parody to satire to non-answers such as you received. Facebook cares about number of subscribers, not what those subscribers actually do.
They're probably getting the books from Smashwords. You can download a book in mobi or epub format from there. I can't access FB from work but if its the same page I'm thinking of, I already reported them. Unfortunately, there are lots of pirated sites out there. I've found my books on two of them. People suck.
You're right, Elaina, and that puts Facebook right down there with the other creeps.
I was going to report the site, but it is no longer found, so I think it is now gone :)
Plenty more where that came from, alas. Thanks for intending to report them, Cassandra!
I also reported this page as soon as I read about it - if enough of us did the same, maybe that's why FB reacted?
Miv wrote: "I also reported this page as soon as I read about it - if enough of us did the same, maybe that's why FB reacted?"Elaina contacted at least one of the big guns' agents, which may have had something to do with it.
Unfortunately, that's a far more likely scenario
I don't know if it worked or not, as my intention was to get rid of the blogger site that had the books. It's far more likely the flood of complaints from IP holders took down the FB page. I didn't receive a reply from all of the publishers, but several were very nice in their replies which gives me hope :)
