A sad story about self-publishing a tech book and fraud on Amazon | Hacker News Reader

A sad story about self-publishing a tech book and fraud on Amazon

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65 pointsgregdoesit12 comments

I'm the author of the said book. I spent one year and a half writing full-time to complete the book. Now, most of the copies sold on Amazon are pirated copies. I have filed copyright claims many times and Amazon does nothing. It’s a very sad story. A third-party seller can simply upload a random book or audiobook, and directly link it to your product page is very scary.

Hey Alex. Thanks for all you've done for the software engineering community. Would suggest legal action against this.

I've never thought that something like this is possible. I hope that Amazon will do something about this.

If I go down to the local farmers market and open a stall selling fake Gucci bags, with signs saying I sell Gucci bags, but on behalf of my supplier, A. Scammer, will the police leave me be then?

Bezos' dichotomy of at once being supplier and "simply a marketplace" when the rules favour a certain facade is absolutely outrageous.

The counterfeiting problem on Amazon has been a problem for a while. It all goes back to the commingling inventory issue which allows (and even encourages) counterfeiters to substitute their inferior goods for the real deal -- at the expense of the consumer and the producer, and to the benefit of Amazon and the counterfeiter.

I feel sorry for the author of this book and I wish I had a better idea about how to solve it. I'm not sure there's any other practical mechanism than to make it go viral and create a PR problem for Amazon.

Made me rethink self-publishing my book with #KDP. This needs to go viral so more publishers decide to use alternatives.

Browsing tech books on Amazon it seems this issue - the default seller being a third party with a steep discounted price - affects so many tech books priced above $30.

I wonder how Amazon takes no action here.

Well let’s not pretend counterfeit and fraud are only (edit) an Amazon problem. Go to Walmart.com and search for “Pokemon” - 4 of the top 5 results are counterfeit cards. I emailed them 2 weeks ago about it, and by “them” I mean most of their executives, got a response from about it, yet nothing’s been done.

https://www.walmart.com/search?q=pokemon

That doesn’t make this OK. Furthermore, if a book was published through Amazon’s own publishing program they already know who is the owner and who is not and could actually solve this fast and efficiently.

Also, infringement is not a victimless crime and while humans can more easily discount its affect on large corporations (in your example with Pokémon), this really affects individual authors that try to make a living off of their talent.

Don't you mean "let's not pretend counterfeit and fraud are _strictly_ an Amazon problem"? All this proves is that it's also Walmart's problem as well.

Yes, you're correct. I've updated my comment

Get a lawyer!

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