Well, never has my flabber been more ghasted. My thanks to Lori and to Emma for writing to me and pointing out that my “free” novels are apparently for sale on Amazon.com as e-books for the Kindle. I had been thinking about making some of my books into Kindle editions, but discounted the idea as ludicrously complicated and probably pointless, so I was astonished to discover it’s already happened. Unfortunately they appear to have been written by someone else.
What?
The road from Langholm Avenue is currently being sold by Kevin Peters under the title “Love lost and found again”. My novel Push Hands is being sold by Jennifer Watson as “Fearful of the consequences”.
I’m actually quite stunned by this.
If you check the “look inside” feature on Amazon for these works, you’ll see the text is mangled and truncated, but definitely my own words. If you pay to download these books you’re going to be disappointed, you’re going to be angry, and my only comfort is you won’t associate them with my name. The product descriptions on Amazon are also a straight forward cut and paste from my descriptions on Feedbooks, where both of these books, like all my works, are available for free – and where, hopefully, the formatting is neater and the text more complete. Jeeze, I agonise over these books,… I kick myself for every misplaced comma and apostrophe, then some scam merchant comes along and hacks and cuts indiscriminately, and charges you six dollars for it.
If you’ve read Push Hands or Langholm Avenue, I thank you,… you are valued as a most rare and precious reader, and much respected by yours truly, whatever you thought of my work. If you’re also an Amazon customer, could I ask you to go over to Amazon.com and leave a comment in the reviews of “Love lost and found again” and “Fearful of the consequences”, pointing out this strange discrepancy?
I don’t mind giving my work away. I love to write and in many ways it’s been a great relief to me to finally brush aside the obsession with published and therefore paid authorship, which was clearly beyond my reach. I do greatly appreciate the comments from all my online readers. It’s given my work a terrific boost over the years, but it hurts to have someone steal and try to sell my stuff under their own name, thinking I wouldn’t notice. I suppose it’s a risk we all take as independent authors, putting our work up there, unprotected, for all the world to see, and maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that someone’s tried to engineer a scam with it.
I urge “Jennifer Watson” and “Kevin Peters”, probably nom-de-plumes of the same n’er-do-well, to remove these books from Amazon.com immediately. If they’ve plagarised my stuff it’s reasonable to assume they’ve done it to other indy authors as well, so I also urge Amazon to take a closer look at their account. I’ll also be writing to Amazon and reporting the outcome here. I’ve been a good customer of theirs over the years, with never a cause for complaint, and I’m sure they’ll be as concerned as I am that this kind of thing is going on.
I’m not sure if I should feel insulted or flattered at this stage. I feel violated, possibly, which isn’t nice at all. I think I’ll take a bath, then go to bed. Maybe I’m dreaming all of this?
My thanks again to Lori and to Emma.
Regards
Michael Graeme
**Updated 18 Feb 2012 ** These plagiarised works are no longer on Amazon.com. They took them down before I was able to contact them. Other works have now appeared though, under my own name and bearing their original titles. These are proving more difficult to shoot down.
The Rivendale Review 
Congratulations Michael, I think. It must be strange but also maddening to find that others have taken a much shorter literary route to personal authorship. I agree with your assumption that if they have copied your works, they have done it to others. Seems like in today’s society, the word shame has gone the way of personally responsibility. Good luck chasing down the scoundrels and forcing them to cease and desist. Good Luck Michael from the foot hills of Maine.
Thanks Robert, appreciate your comment. I’m still amazed by this, but take comfort from the support of my readers. Respects.
Michael
It must feel a bit like identity theft. I hope the process of sorting it out isn’t too hard on you! Thanks for sharing, and hopefully some safeguards will be put in place so this doesn’t happen to anyone else~ I must reblog!
Reblogged this on Drop by Drop We Fill the Pot and commented:
I wonder how many other undetected cases like this are out there?
Thanks for the comments. It certainly came as a surprise to me.