Ok, so over the years I’ve had a few people take my work and republish it for profit, without permission of course. Normally they’re pretty blatant and low effort, a quick formatting change and publish on Amazon to try and make a quick buck.
Usually it’s part of a larger scraping of mcstories.com or something else, however recently I discovered an author that did this, and took the time to make more than just cosmetic changes.
The story in question was Trust Fund, which I published back in 2015, and the author renamed all the characters, split up paragraphs, added in punctuation like quotations around thoughts that weren’t required, added in additional “subliminal” commands, etc.
The ebook on Amazon in question is no longer available, the author (AltraTranhttps://www.amazon.com/stores/Altra-Transformer/author/B07M8VFFJ5sformer, who is also on the MCForum as well as Tumblr) has taken it down with a few others by the looks of it after I pointed out the issue on Tumblr.
It’s such a strange thing to have someone take your work and claim it as their own… it’s not like it won’t eventually be found out… it’s the Internet after all!
Anyway, I’d like to thank the reader that pointed out the ebook and the plagiarization, as well as Sadie Thatcher for the kind/supportive e-mails.
Ally
August 2, 2023 — 2:05 am
I’m curious, what is the process of getting a book removed that is stolen like that? How do you ‘prove’ that you’re the one who wrote it when it comes to something that is mostly published anonymously?
Glad you got it taken care of at least.
The Hands That Lead
August 2, 2023 — 9:18 am
Amazon does have a form to fill out for IP infringement, however it does require you provide your physical address, so I didn’t go that way to start.
Instead I reached out to the infringing author and they quickly removed it as if I do submit a report, they’d lose their entire account. They haven’t responded to me yet, but I didn’t really expect that either.a
As for proof, that’s pretty easy actually, as the story has been on mcstoires.com since 2015 and it was *very* obvious that it was plagiarized.
Ally
August 5, 2023 — 12:16 am
I guess if you went the Amazon route, you’d basically have to identify yourself and also convince them that you were the person on mcstories?
I’m not sure if I’ll ever be plagiarized, but it’d be awkward if I had to link my fictionmania account… haha.
But good that scaring the author worked out… even if they really didn’t face any consequences for stealing your work.
The Hands That Lead
August 5, 2023 — 9:00 pm
I can understand why Amazon wants your address, etc., it will cut down a lot of scam reports and abuse of the system. If it had come down to it I think I would have done what was required, though I might have setup a post office box at a service as a workaround.
Pretty much anyone who writes and releases on the Internet is going to be ripped off at some point, this isn’t the first time for me and many other authors. Usually someone scrapes mcstories and then builds an anthology to release on Amazon from it.