Any SP authors ever suffer from this experience

You mean like this? The thread is kind of long, but near the end there are some links to other stories about the problem and that particular thief.

Amazon is currently making it so easy for people to steal others' work and profit from it that I hope they get nailed soon. They really need to tighten up the process to stop blatant thievery and content-farming-for-profit.

The whole writing gig is hard enough without having to worry about this, too.

Wow. So these jerks download an e-book, copy/paste, then upload it as their own? Unreal. I hope they get some kind of content comparison algorithm going to spot this. My wife uses one for the classes she teaches. It highlights every highlighted sentence that's been plagiarized and lists the copied source. I'm sure they could get something similar up and running.

hughhowey said:

Wow. So these jerks download an e-book, copy/paste, then upload it as their own? Unreal. I hope they get some kind of content comparison algorithm going to spot this. My wife uses one for the classes she teaches. It highlights every highlighted sentence that's been plagiarized and lists the copied source. I'm sure they could get something similar up and running.

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That's if Amazon gave a hoot and I don't think they do.

Amazon gets their money regardless of who actually *owns* the book and they've been quite nonchalant about not trying to get the money back from the pirate and giving it to the proper author.

They just don't care - they're making money like crazy from the self-pub authors and they don't want to even try to slow down the process by running books through any sort of program.

There's money in them there hills and no one wants to wait while the rush is on.

I think the OP was actually trying to get here:
http://michellemccleod.blogspot.com/2012/01/dangers-of-amazons-kdp-select.html

It's a slightly different story from what a number of Literotica writers have experienced and fueled by KDP Select's exclusive terms specifically.

In a nutshell, author publishes story exclusively and makes it free. Pirates steal and repackage free content and upload it for sale. Amazon bots find this "violation" of exclusivity and shut down the author's book on Amazon.

J. Tanner said:

It's a slightly different story from what a number of Literotica writers have experienced....

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What's truly terrifying for us honest types to contemplate is just how many variations the thieves will come up with.

Yep. This one is pretty insideous not so much in the theft itself but in how the unintended consequences of exclusivity enforcement punish the author directly.

This topic has not come up that I've seen on the primary discussion site for KDP so I'm curious as to how widespread it really is and why any author would be afraid to discuss it publicly, but I have no reason to doubt it's true.

hughhowey said:

Wow. So these jerks download an e-book, copy/paste, then upload it as their own? Unreal. I hope they get some kind of content comparison algorithm going to spot this. My wife uses one for the classes she teaches. It highlights every highlighted sentence that's been plagiarized and lists the copied source. I'm sure they could get something similar up and running.

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Oh, yeah. Amazon has content comparison. When they detect a duplicate, they send the authors an email telling *Them* to rectify the problem and prove which one is the real owner.

For the thief, it's quick money and no worries if it doesn't pay off. For the author, it's a major pain and a loss of income.

It sucks that people can be so dishonest.

Content plagiarism and thefts on Amazon KDP Select

The systemic problem here (compare to the similar, wildly unfair situation with "automated DMCA-based content take-downs on YouTube", etc.), is that on-line entities such as Amazon, have tried to automate a process that inherently involves human judgment.

The DMCA process has a perverse incentive for entities with a marginal real case, to have content arbitrarily censored, without anything like due process; whereas, the opposite is the case here, where it is the content owner that doesn't get a fair hearing.

My guess is that if a (living, breathing) Amazon / KDP representative were to get the real author of one of these works, on (say) a Skype video chat channel, and were then to invite the thief(ves) to the same forum in which to establish "who is the real owner of the intellectual property involved", while there might be a very few problematic cases where you had an experienced liar involved, it wouldn't take long for the Amazon rep to figure out who is the legitimate content owner and who is the thief.

For example : "So, Mr. John StoryAbsconder, when was it, again, that you started work on the first draft of this book? Tell me, what changes did you do to the narrative, in between then and when you published it? Oh, and by the way, can you find me one of those first drafts? Just send me a few pages right now, please... and incidentally, can you find me someone, right now, who saw you working on the book?" etc., etc.

What authors need to do (collectively) to stamp out this ugly little scam, is to lean on Amazon, Lulu, Smashwords, the lot of them... and ask for a REAL dispute adjudication mechanism involving REAL human beings. My guess is that the scammers would then go on to some other, more easily-profitable swindle.

Regards

GodOfABF said:

What authors need to do (collectively) to stamp out this ugly little scam, is to lean on Amazon, Lulu, Smashwords, the lot of them... and ask for a REAL dispute adjudication mechanism involving REAL human beings. My guess is that the scammers would then go on to some other, more easily-profitable swindle.

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Amazon is prepared to take on major publishers with tens of thousands of writers in their catalogues, many of whom sell huge numbers of books. How many self-published authors do you think would have to work together to achieve anything?

Anyone who thinks that Amazon is "the small publisher's friend" is deluding themselves.

They're just a (semi-) honest Willie Sutton.

"Why do we publish small authors? Cause that's where the money is."

"Why do we sell e-books and e-readers at below cost? Because eventually that's where the rest of the money will be."

Richard White said:

Anyone who thinks that Amazon is "the small publisher's friend" is deluding themselves.

They're just a (semi-) honest Willie Sutton.

"Why do we publish small authors? Cause that's where the money is."

"Why do we sell e-books and e-readers at below cost? Because eventually that's where the rest of the money will be."

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That's pretty much how I think of the Amazon self-publishing.

Maybe I'm being a little naive, but why would Amazon not just delete the second entry? If there is plagiarism going on, doesn't it stand to reason it's the copy that's been forged and not the original? Or, at least cross-reference the uploader's IP against those that downloaded the original book (I'm sure they've got that info, right?). This wouldn't help the original publisher recoup his/her losses, but it would prevent further loss. It doesn't seem like this should be a big deal and that, if it's a common practice, it would make potential SP's wary and seek other venues, thus impacting Amazon's bottom line.

Terie said:

Amazon is currently making it so easy for people to steal others' work and profit from it that I hope they get nailed soon. They really need to tighten up the process to stop blatant thievery and content-farming-for-profit.

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I don't think this is an Amazon-specific problem. When I published my novel, I must have done just enough publicity to excite some #@!# reader because this reader went on a forum and asked if anyone had a "free" copy. A few days later, my "free" novel arrived on pirate sites and available for download.

It's not a SP-specific problem, either. If I was a willing participant, I could read "free" books by every writer on the Bestseller list.