Just found a pirated version of my book! What are my options?

[Claudette]

I was on Amazon and looking for stats on my book when I discovered someone has pirated my book.
What they did is take photos of the book, copy and pasted it to create a terrible version of my book that is all out of sync.
The chapters don't follow, some of the sentences are cut in half.
This is terrible.
Have any of you had this happen to you?
What are the steps you recommend taking?
The author isn't even real either as I tried to check him/her out and theres' nothing.
Looking forward in hearing your thougths.

Claudette

[Sapha]

Report it to Amazon, and prepare a cease and desist letter for the seller. Also: Make it public. Put a bad review saying this isn’t their book, but yours, and they are to stop. It’s your intellectual property and they haven’t the right. Also check your DRM is on, with the Amazon sales function (if you or your publisher used kdp). Access Copyright & The Writers Union of Canada have excellent form letters for this. It happens all the time with archive.org. (Which is a fantastic place for works outside copyright, it’s awesome. But not when works still IN copyright are being used without permission).

[Jan]

I'm so sorry this happened to you, Claudette. It looks like Sapha has some good advice. Those who cannot create, destroy.

[Claudette]

Sapha wrote: "Report it to Amazon, and prepare a cease and desist letter for the seller. Also: Make it public. Put a bad review saying this isn’t their book, but yours, and they are to stop. It’s your intellectu..."

Thank you. I just reported this theft to Amazon. The 'seller' has no identification so there's no way of communication or sending any kind of legal letter.
Let's see what Amazon will do about this.
I appreciate the comment and feedback.

[Claudette]

Jan wrote: "I'm so sorry this happened to you, Claudette. It looks like Sapha has some good advice. Those who cannot create, destroy."

Thanks for the comment. I've sent a complaint to Amazon. Let's see what will happen next.

[Dan]

How'd it go Claudette? Did Amazon take it down?

[Claudette]

No they didn't. They say that they can know for sure that the book is a copyright infringement. I'm going to try again.
It's discouraging to try to prove it's your work and to have some automation tell you that it's not.

[Sapha]

Did you self-publish? Do you have a publisher, who can email as well on your behalf?

[Anna]

Have you got a link to the pirated version, Claudette?

[Nancy]

Bummer! Big time bummer. It can happen to anyone and I sincerely hope you can rectify the situation. No idea how to start the process but keep us posted.

[Lizzie]

~Report it to your publisher and they will take it down.

[Donovan]

How did you happen to discover this? Was it through Author Central?

[J.]

Interesting and a potential problem for us all.
Dave Chesson just did a news letter that addresses this very issue. He included links to various articles that detail what you can and should do. I've subscribed to his emails for a while and he's pretty good at what he does. You might email him at this address and see if you can get that newsletter. dave@kindlepreneur.com
Good luck and keep us informed of what happens.

[Robert]

That really sucks. It is Amazon's duty as the publisher to protect their authors, so don't let up on them. I had the 6th book in my Tony Mandolin series pirated by a Chinese site that sold it via a page in Hong Kong. By the time I found out it had over 53,000 reviews. Mostly 5 stars. Seems Amazon also doesn't consider those valid sales.

[Karl]

Hello Claudette, I have not read everyone’s comments, but I think you need to pursue the matter. You have to keep up with it. Don’t let up. Let us know what AMAZON does, how they reply to you, etc. Thank you for the information.