AUTHORS – Help STOP Copyright Infringement.
LOGO of Site under discussion.
See Dianne Gray’s comment under this article.
I would like to share a letter sent to me by a fellow independent author, who wishes to remain anonymous, about a website claiming to be promoting independent authors, when in reality it appears that they are offering free downloads of the work of dozens of us.
If you are an author, independent or otherwise, I urge you to read this letter and investigate the site yourself. Find out if your work is posted there and take appropriate action to have it removed, or, at the very least, make sure you are willing to grant permission to the site owners to list your work.
Making money as an independent author is difficult enough without pirating sites giving our work away under false pretenses AND without our permission.
Please share, tweet or reblog this post in order to spread the word through the independent author community and, hopefully, put some pressure…
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Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog 
Thanks, Lorinda. That’s one less site I have to look into/deal with!
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I remember, once, a blog was copying mine, another blogger friend’s, and even more bloggers’ blog posts, claiming them as their own. Me and the blogger buddy helped get it shut down, but then they popped up again. And again. 😦 They’re taken care of now. 🙂
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Thanks for this post, Chris. Shared on FB, LI, Twitter. Here’s the comment I left on blindoggbooks:
My book is there as well, but it links to Kobo and there’s no free download button. I’ve also recently discovered that my book is listed on 1. Lybrary eBooks, for the eBook price (http://www.lybrary.com/); 2. Scribd (http://www.scribd.com/) which allows folks to read books for a monthly subscription fee of $8.99 but doesn’t say if they’re affiliated with retailers that pay royalties; 3. Leanpub (https://leanpub.com/) which I have to investigate further, but they allow anyone to post book links to their site & share profits 50/50 with these folks – haven’t yet learned if or how authors get paid royalties. And I’m sure there’s a dozen more! How in the world do we stop these people?!!
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I don’t know anything about Lybrary or Leanpub, but Scribd is legitimate. Smashwords is affiliated with it and Smashwords will list your books there. It’s a subscription service, where you can read part of a book and then they charge you, and the author gets a royalty. I’ve never read anything trhough it myself and frankly I’m a little in the dark about how this works, but here is some of what Smashwords has to say about subscription services. http://blog.smashwords.com/2013/10/examining-business-model-of-ebook.html
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Thanks for that information Lorinda 😀
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My book is there too. Both editions. Neither do I have the 2nd Edition :). Not anymore…
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I think this is a great honor; to have one’s book spotlighted for free. Chris the Story Reading Ape is the greatest. I’m always impressed with him. Authors get in touch with him and get spotlighted. He does a good job.
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THANK YOU Pattimari 😀
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I just clicked on the site’s URL and got only an IE message that this site couldn’t be opened. So maybe it is being taken down.
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IE May have built-in protection regards such suspect sites Lorinda, Safari took me there earlier but my antivirus software warned me not to proceed 🙂
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I checked Spam Adviser and this was they say about this site –
“This site is using an anonymous service – which prevents us from identifying the site owner. This can sometimes be just so that the owner does not receive spam, but be aware that many scam sites use this as a method to hide their identify. If this is an ecommerce site – we would suggest you confirm the business address with the website owners.
Scamadviser has detected negative online feedback associated with this company so you may want to do further checks”
All my books are there and they have been taken from Smashwords.(not Amazon). Even though they state on Twitter they work through Amazon. I can tell they have taken my books from Smashwords by the introductions to them. I’ll email Mark Coker.
I’ll also copy this response to Blindoggbooks.
PS – This makes me furious because they are STEALING our work!
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My two Antivirus programmes kicked in immediately I went there to warn me off, also, the site seemed to have Russian style writing on a button under their tweet me button in the right column.
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It’s certainly a con. I checked Twitter – they’re very new on the site. I tweeted them and other authors warning they had stolen books and they have lied about being affiliated with Amazon (which is what they state on Twitter). They’ll be shut down soon, but unfortunately another one will probably take their place 😦
The best we can do to stop this kind of thing is to warn people that they are not getting any books when they use sites like this – they’re just downloading viruses.
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Agreed Dianne.
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Interesting. Only one of mine is there – Onet’s Tale. But as it is no longer available, having been withdrawn by the publisher IFWG, it doesn’t matter…
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It is still worth while going through the complaints channels Jack 😀
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