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UNAUTHORIZED SALES: WHAT TO DO?
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I believe Amazon will handle it for you.I have a Question: Why are you not selling it on Amazon yourself? It is the single biggest marketplace.
I'm in Canada and when I looked around, Amazon was a bit tricky to join because of the rather complicated tax applications. Also I wanted a distributer to a large group of other retailers, and I didn't like the approach Amazon seemed to be taking to other distributers. Smashwords came highly recommend, and has proved very helpful, has allowed my books to be on sites such as Kobo, Apple, B&N.Since it was my first sortie into publishing,and since I knew I could sign up with Amazon any time, and since the royalties percentage was better, that's what I did.
In retrospect, had I uploaded to both, I could have avoided all this, and once Amazon takes down the Smashwords version, I will. What I did not want to do was commit myself to the exclusivity of Amazon, and when I first got into this, I could not quite figure out if I could control that. It seems I can, and with greater ease than I thought.
This is a pre-retirement hobby for me right now, and my day job keeps me so busy, I had to keep it simple. I just have so little time. I have learned an awful lot since I started down this road a year ago. And there has been a lot of shifting sand in between.
Smashwords has been very good in their help.
I think you're right about Amazon, that they will take care of it, but as an example, my first foray into this problem was Nov 4th, and here it is Nov 7th, and the book is still up on Amazon, still with the Smashwords copyright on the inside page, still with the notice 93 pages in to go to Smashwords to get the rest of the book. That kind of vigilance might answer your question.
Jeff Bazos has not written back to me yet, but I have had a couple of personal emails already from Mark Coker.
Have you been happy with Amazon? You in the USA?
Although I'm on Smashwords, with all their distributors, my sales are overwhelmingly on Amazon. You can choose whether or not to go exclusively with Amazon by joining or not joining KDP Select. If you don't join, you can distribute your books anywhere, as with any other retailer. One advantage I've found with Amazon, is that they'll credit your bank account monthly, regardless of how little the amount is. With Smashwords and Lulu, you have to accumulate $10 if you're with Paypal, which often takes awhile during times of slow sales.
I am such a loyal creature, it is hard, but my wife does say it is one of my best qualities. And I have to admit, I am humble enough to attribute my slow sales to poor writing rather than lack of exposure.Formatting for uploading, etc. that has all been relatively easy for you with Amazon?
Any Canadian writers out there with the same tax concerns?
After this experience I must confess I am thinking that if I can't beat them, I might as well join them. As I said, this would have been avoided, even though it certainly wasn't my fault.
Also, can you put one book of a series on KDP Select, and leave the rest off?
Brian, for all I know smashwords do distribute on Amazon on their extended distribution list, but in most locations it doesn't go through, however re: Canada I remember receiving an update recently from smashwords that if I'm not mistaken stated that their titles went live on Amazon Canada. I won't be surprised if you see your book on amazon.ca thanks to smashwords. Pls check whether u c it on amaz. Us, uk or in, for example?Nik
Distributing to Amazon through Smashwords is difficult to impossible for a beginning author. Here's what Smashwords says: "Although we have a distribution agreement with Amazon via their Kindle Direct Platform, they're unable to receive our entire catalog. In the meantime, we're only distributing a few hundred titles to Amazon out of our catalog of nearly 400,000. We understand that many Smashwords authors would prefer the convenience of consolidating their distribution to Amazon via Smashwords, rather than uploading direct to Amazon. If your book has earned over $2,000 at Smashwords retailers and you would prefer to consolidate your distribution via Smashwords to Amazon as opposed to uploading direct with them, please click the "support" link at the bottom of this page and let us know you're in the $2,000 club and would like to be considered for our distribution to Amazon."
I opt out at Smashwords and go directly to Amazon. Formatting is generally easier with Amazon, and you can check the results before you hit "Publish." You can put any number of books in KDP Select, and keep any number out--your choice. Amazon does have a lot of info about tax reporting and such that you might want to check out. I use my SSN, but you may have to get a business number, such as an EIN (Employer Identification Number). Not sure.
I opt out at Smashwords and go directly to Amazon. Formatting is generally easier with Amazon, and you can check the results before you hit "Publish." You can put any number of books in KDP Select, and keep any number out--your choice. Amazon does have a lot of info about tax reporting and such that you might want to check out. I use my SSN, but you may have to get a business number, such as an EIN (Employer Identification Number). Not sure.
Brian wrote: "...Any Canadian writers out there with the same tax concerns?..."I'm distributing my books through Amazon (among others: Kobo directly and then using Draft2Digital for everything else) and have had no problems with the tax side. Just go through their process of filling out the online tax interview. There is a place where you enter your international tax number (in this case your Canadian SIN). Once you have established that you are Canadian and that you live in Canada, your tax withholding will be set to 0% because we are a treaty country (yay NAFTA). Draft2Digital has the same thing now (although when I originally signed up with them I had to fill in the paperwork manually).
MY BOOK IS GONE FROM AMAZON!Hey, that rhymes.
I am thrilled and relieved, although I would dearly love to know who did it, and doubt I ever will. I fully expect Amazon will want a court order to divulge the perp, in order to indemnify them from privacy breach.
Now the job of uploading to Amazon.
But watch out everybody. It is obviously an easy thing to do.
Now go publish your book to Amazon! STAT!
As punishment? Irony. I think I will.Thanks folks.
My sales on Amazon dwarfed my sales through smashwords!I now publish exclusively on Amazon. I hate the exclusive bit, but kindle select is too good a deal to give up.
DO publish on Amazon.
If you do the exclusive Amazon with KDP Select the royalty is 70% the cover price.Awesome.
Even without KDP Select the royalty is 70% in most countries for books priced $2.99 and above.
Ken wrote: "Even without KDP Select the royalty is 70% in most countries for books priced $2.99 and above."Why limit yourself to just Amazon? Apple iBooks is a big market as well. I sold almost as many books there as I did on Amazon in my first month of sales (my book was just released Oct 2). I have to admit being a little disappointed in my sales on Kobo. I expected more there (but that could just be bias on my part since I own a Kobo ereader).
Through Smashwords I've sold one at Kobo, one at Apple, and one at Scribd. Hasn't been a big market for me, and I've sold more at Smashwords itself, and far more at Amazon. I don't go with KDP Select because I like having my books everywhere possible.
Hey guys. There is already a topic on the pros and cons of expanded markets vs. exclusivity. I would recommend taking the discussion to that thread and leaving this one for folks who might find themselves in the same predicament as the OP. Thanks!
Martin wrote: "Now go publish your book to Amazon! STAT!"Done
Gerry wrote: "What is an unauthorized sale????"Someone sells your book without your permission, and often, without your knowledge. In this case, though, I caught the posting of my book sample on Amazon before any copies sold. It's just that I didn't post it, and it wasn't the whole book that was being offered for a price.
I have, subsequent to this episode, registered with Amazon, and now have my books for sale WITH my authorization.
Brian wrote: "Gerry wrote: "What is an unauthorized sale????"Someone sells your book without your permission, and often, without your knowledge. In this case, though, I caught the posting of my book sample on ..."
Gerry wrote: "What is an unauthorized sale????"
How sad for you. Glad you caught it in time. I hadn't heard about this happening before, thank you for clearing it up.
Smashwords estimated about 12 in the last 400,000. Why me, I don't know, but I took it as a compliment. I was pretty anxious for a while, don't know why, but good learning experience...and it forced me to register with Amazon. After all, it can't happen again if I upload first:-)
Thanks for sharing this nightmare experience, and how you solved it.
I thought it was over...I was looking at my blurb on Hollow Moon in Amazon, and realized I had called the moon solid instead of hollow in one part of the long description prose. So I changed it in the meta-data, and submitted the changes.
AMAZON'S RESPONSE TO MY CORRECTION OF META-DATA
Emails from Amazon in Italics.
Next thing I know I get this scary email from Amazon:
Nov 28, 2015, at 22:48, Kindle Direct Publishing wrote:
Hello,
Thanks for using Amazon KDP. To publish your book, please respond with documentation confirming your publishing rights within five days:
Trojan: Hollow Moon of Jupiter by DINGLE, BRIAN HENRY (AUTHOR) (ID:6795676)
Your book appears to be in the public domain. Please provide the following information to confirm where it can be distributed:
1. A URL that confirms all authors and translators (if applicable) and their dates of death
2. A URL that confirms the initial publication date of the work
If the book is not in the public domain, please indicate this in your reply and include any documentation you have of your rights. If you publish books for which you do not hold the electronic publishing rights, your account may be terminated.
Thank you,
Kindle Direct Publishing
http://kdp.amazon.com
BRIAN'S FRANTIC RESPONSE IN NORMAL
What's going on here. All I did was change a word in my description of the book. I published this book with Amazon on Nov 9th, and previously with Smashwords on Aug 30th 2015. You folks allowed some other person to upload a sample from Smashwords and sell it on your site as theirs. Now you are questioning whether it is in the public domain?
What are you asking? This is my book. I wrote it. What do you want? I have no URL about my death or anybody else's.
I cannot give you any documentation. It's my book!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
BRIAN'S NEXT FRANTIC EMAIL WHEN HE REALIZES MAYBE WHAT THEY ARE ASKING FOR
You are asking for URL confirming the date of initial publication: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view... August 30th 2015
and the Amazon URL from Nov 9th publication date : http://www.amazon.com/Trojan-Hollow-Moon-Jupiter-Book-ebook/dp/B017RTFS0S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448843383&sr=8-1&keywords=dingle+hollow
In response to your email which I have pasted immediately below, in italics, from Nov 28th, please see the copied thread of emails with your copyright infringement department from a few days before I published with Amazon, showing that someone else had taken the original from Smashwords. Subsequent to this investigation I published with Amazon on Nov 9th. This may explain why you think there is something wrong now with the claim to copyright (see the email from Anne Tarpy, a Copyright/Trademark Agent for Amazon whom I guess you can contact for confirmation at copyright@amazon.com) : blah, blah, blah...
AMAZON'S NEXT GAMBIT Amazon stuff is in Italics
No sorry, no by your leave, no explanation, just this (with a copy of the email at the top of this page appended):
Hello,
Your book is currently live and available for purchase. Check out the detail page to check the status:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B017RTFS0S
Although you see your title available for purchase, it can take up to 24 hours for it to show up with a ‘Live’ status on your Bookshelf.
I hope this helps! Thanks for using Amazon KDP.
Best Regards,
Betina C.
Amazon.com
Your feedback is helping us build Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company.
http://www.amazon.com/your-account
______________________________
Connect with KDP and other Authors and Publishers:
Like us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/KindleDirectP...
Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/AmazonKDP
THAT'S IT. ONE NIGHT'S SLEEP GONE, AND I HAD TO DEAL WITH SICK PATIENTS TODAY
I have heard that the pen is mightier than the sword, but I am just not sure if I was cut out for this; whether this kind of anxiety is worth it. I am wondering if I should pull my books from Amazon and go back to exclusively Smashwords.
Maybe it's never over. ANYBODY ELSE HAVING TROUBLE LIKE THIS?
Brian wrote: "I thought it was over...I was looking at my blurb on Hollow Moon in Amazon, and realized I had called the moon solid instead of hollow in one part of the long description prose. So I changed it in..."
I wonder if your previous situation made Amazon a little overzealous about trying to rein in unauthorized sales :/
Hi Brian,Two things to check. First of all, when you go to the upload page, did you check that you hold the copyright? It asks if you hold the copyright or if the work is public domain. And second, yes, as Melissa states, they might have had you confirm who you are based on the previous interaction. The last email, confirming that the vhanges have been made and are live, should be enough, but you might want to double check your info just in case.
Yeah, I remember what you mean about the question, but I cannot remember ... I didn't think you could get by that without answering it...you know, I think everything just stops if you don't check that.I guess I'm just a little miffed that they seem to take no responsibility for their errors, and so I wonder how many more times it will happen.
It is Probably Almost OverAs some of you masochistic types may have read this entire thread, I place here for documentation the last death throes of this issue, I hope.
You will know by now that my book on Smashwords was taken (only 20% of the book at that … the perp didn't even have the sense or the dignity to purchase the whole book … he just took the free sample) and uploaded to Amazon under that perp's name for that perp's (and Amazon's) profit.
I found it by accident, had it taken down after a lot of angst and emails, after about three days. At the time, I thought it might never come down, or might take a long time.
Not wanting the buyer to suffer through the faults of this perp or Amazon, you can apportion those faults as you see fit, I placed a 'REVIEW' on the book, pointing out that the book only contained the first 92 pages of my original (which is 493 pages), and offering to give the whole book free to anyone who had paid for the pirated version.
I reasoned that once the book was taken down, this fake review would come down with it.
Safe.
I tried to give the book no rating, but Amazon does not allow that, only one to five stars, and after some machinations and guilt, and fully believing it would soon be gone, I gave it five stars. Afterall, I wanted the prospective buyer to read this, and realize they were only going to get 20% of the book.
Everything worked out, barring the recent glitch you will have seen above, and down came the book and its bogus review on Nov 5th or so. No sales either, so no harm.
Why, I don't know, maybe because I am Canadian, I went to the Amazon.ca site, found my book. It was 493 pages. The right book.
One review. Oh oh.
Sure enough, my original bogus review was still there, now attached to this new book. The new book has an unique identifier, the ASIN, as did the old. The old was B0153QVD88. The bogus review was attached to this book with this ASIN, but now had become attached to the new book with all its 493 pages B017RTFS0S
This was puzzling. I would have thought the ASIN, now recorded as B017RTFS0S, and showing the nice newly corrected description with the word hollow instead of solid in the right place, would dictate the attachment of the review.
Apparently, Amazon, certainly Amazon.ca, does not use the ASIN to determine attachment of the review. Perhaps this is so new editions of the book will have the same reviews, but that doesn't seem quite right. What if the new edition is different?
I looked at my bogus review, and found no method of removing or changing it. There was a nice little blue line saying Report Abuse. Should have been Report Abuse Twitter, because it only allowed about 144 characters.
I reported that this was the wrong review on the wrong book.
Then I went to put a review on the book to tell people this was now the right book, even though the review below says it was the wrong book … and it told me I could not place a review on my own book. OK.
Remember, before, the review had been placed on the perp's book, which, even though it was mine, I could put a review on it, because it was the perp's, not mine. Probably the only time on Amazon you can put a review on your own book, is when someone else steals it and puts it on Amazon.
But it did let me find my own reviews (see all reviews by Brian Henry Dingle or something like that) and there was my review on what was now my own book!
And there was now (I swear it wasn't there before) an Edit button. More important there was now a Remove button.
I cleared the bogus five star rating, removed the review, all the time worried it would remove the whole book, and with that it is gone. I do not know how it became attached to the new book, nor how it was not removed when the old book was removed.
Now I figure I'd better go to each and every Amazon site to remove this review.
My 'to do' list. Not as bad as Amazon's 'to do' list for their database code. What a Medusa's head that process diagram must be.
So this is here to document what I hope is the end of this thread. Want to make bets?
Hi Brian. You can have the review that you posted removed simply by contacting Amazon customer support. Please understand though, that they may give you something of a hard time because by posting your original review, you violated their TOC. Yes, I understand that you were frustrated when you did this and you will have to explain what happened, but you can't place all of the burden on Amazon for this one.
I have contacted customer support, obviously, many times. I told them from the beginning what I had done, what I was doing, and what they had done. I have no idea what they think of it, because they are not communicating other than to inform me the book was removed. They allowed the book to stay up online for three days after I contacted them.I did not violate their terms of contract because at the time I had no contract with them. I stated clearly within the review that I was the author, that it was a bogus review designed to alert potential buyers, and to allow me send them a free copy if Amazon had sold them only the first eight chapters (out of 35).I did purchase a copy of the pirated book, but Amazon waived the cost because I told them I wanted to know what had happened. The person on the phone told me he would try to give it to me free, but I didn't find out until the next day. Amazon did not follow up on this to see if I, as a purchaser, was satisfied with the pirated truncated copy. I was charitable, and figured that was because they had charged me nothing. In truth, I doubt they looked or cared.
In my view the burden is on the perp and on Amazon, and I have behaved impeccably since I have had a contract with them. And I am satisfied that I behaved well even before I had a contract with them. I do not think they wanted to sell the first 20% for the cost of the book, only to see at the end "Buy this at Smashwords."
The belated good news is that only Canada seems to have managed to connect the review I put on the pirated copy (B0153QVD88) to my book (B017RTFS0S), so that now no review of the pirated copy appears to be on any Amazon site.
The TOS I refer to is the one you entered into by writing the review, not as the book seller. Still, it looks like the issue has been taken care of.
Christina wrote: "The TOS I refer to is the one you entered into by writing the review, not as the book seller. Still, it looks like the issue has been taken care of."I have reviewed their comments on reviews as posted on their site, and have found nothing which prohibits what I have done; nor did their representative object on the evening I called them. My review was completely transparent, stating clearly that I was warning prospective buyers that they would be buying only one fifth of the book. Every word in the review was accurate, which seems to be all their TOS seems to request.
The review on the Canadian site was not referring to the book which was there; completely different ASIN. It had not been taken down, even though the book had. This was clearly Amazon's mistake, not mine. It is pretty bad programming to build a database that fails to appropriately use a unique identifier.
And the fact that the book's title page, as well as the last page of this pirated version, referred to Smashwords so that buyers could go there to make another purchase for the other 80% of the book should have been sufficient for Amazon to recognize their original error. I am confident that Amazon would not wish to sell such a book and I suspect that if they were to really communicate with me outside of their standard boilerplate, they would thank me.
Or apologize to me.
I think to blithely submit to arbitrary measures would have placed a small burden of guilt on me. As it stands, I will do the same thing again if this happens again.
If this posting for my book on Amazon is GONE, by the time you look for it, I have won my battle: AMAZON's Posting of MY BOOK.
IT IS NOW TRULY GONE [text added after posting]
Until it is gone, which I hope is very soon, compare it to this:
MY REAL BOOK on Smashwords
You see, I DON'T HAVE A CONTRACT WITH AMAZON to sell this book. BUT I WILL VERY SOON NOW THAT THE BOGUS BOOK HAS BEEN REMOVED [text added after posting]
What this looks like to me (and I have investigated with both Smashwords and Amazon) is that someone, without my permission, has taken a sampler (20% of my book) and uploaded it under their account to Amazon's site for Kindle.
While I am not sure when it went up, I first found it on Nov. 4, 2015.
As of Nov 7th, it is still there.
Amazon was very nice, and I am quite sure this was not their intent. They have informed me they will remove it from all Amazon sites (and there are a lot of them...I think one is even in Spanish).
After all, the book says Smashwords Edition on the copyright page, and comes to an abrupt end at the Eighth Chapter (the original has thirty five) with a statement that if you want to buy this book (for the second time, by the way...it is listed at $1.99 on USA site of Amazon, and $2.64 on the Canadian site) you can go to Smashwords site to buy it.
This has several obvious disadvantages for both the author, and both distributers! The worst of it is that the buyer will be rightfully very upset.
I have done everything I can do to get this remedied, including putting a fake customer review on the book's Amazon site telling people who bought it that if they write to me I will replace their 93 page copy with the original 500+ page copy. I have asked Smashwords to provide a listing of all the online retail sites they distribute to (they already have this) and further to create a listing of all sites and their URLs for us authors to periodically search.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
For now, try to search big retailers for your book, the ones your aggregator like Smashwords does NOT distribute to, of course. If you find it, some clues to whether or not it is your original, or some sampler, is the size in pages estimate (short of buying the thing and looking at it...I mean, I am really opposed to that!).
When I first complained to Amazon, they were very nice, and they sent me a free copy so I could check it out, to prove to myself it was a sample, before I put the bogus review (obviously I identified myself as the author, and that this was NOT a real review...I have apologized on my blog for giving it such a high rating, but that rating should come down as soon as the book does...I actually considered giving it the lowest rating, but I couldn't bring myself to do that, rationalizing my guilt that I had to get their attention, and Amazon does not let you post the review WITHOUT a rating like some other sites do). I put my email address on their site for any disgruntled customer so I could at least give them a copy of the real book, and I hope Amazon will repay them the original cost. Of course, it may not have sold any :-) / :-(
Sites like Smashwords and Amazon cannot police the net for bogus copies of our books.
We have to do that.
Once again, if the first link above does not take you anywhere, then Amazon has done their job and removed the book. Two days since I reported it. I am counting, Amazon.