Update to my previous post about unauthorized book sales on Amazon: it appears I’m far from alone in discovering an unauthorized spiral bound copy of my own book. The fantastic artist and genius behind the amazingly-apt title Cat’s Being Dick’s, Julie Kitzes experienced nearly the same exact issue and wrote about it in her blog.
Shortly afterwards, someone suspiciously released 64 AI-generated fashion books with her name in the matter of four days time. I don’t know when this occurred or what the ultimate resolution is, but that’s some pretty harsh BS especially seeing that someone just “bound” my books as well, and Amazon appears unable or unwilling to stop them. I reached out to Julie earlier today after discovering her blog post but haven’t heard back as of yet.
Update: I heard back from Julie since first writing about this, but she’s busy. I don’t want to speak on her behalf as I don’t know her that well, but perhaps she will shed some light on this later on either here or on her blog.
Seeing that her blog article didn’t post a date, I decided to search Julie’s name on Amazon to see what other titles pulled up. Much to my amazement and dismay, this happened a couple of years ago and it turns out ALL of the offending books she mentioned falsely being listed under her name are still being listed on Amazon.
Now, I don’t know what steps she has taken, but I do wish her all the best including others that find themselves in a similar predicament. I know from over two decades of having been an artist that I have faced many of my own trials and tribulations especially when it comes to non-payments for work and even copyright theft. Art is a difficult field to even earn a modest income, and we sure as heck don’t need scammers trying to pass themselves off as ourselves or taking advantage of other people along the way.
If I may digress, the problem with copyright lawsuits lies in proving that the offending company was firstly notified and then secondly having gained financially enough to have made it worth suing them in the first place. After all, you can’t squeeze water from a stone. Lawyers can usually write a cease and desist to the offending party and can ask for more information from a company such as Amazon. Amazon’s attorneys will likely have to visit the state or location the offending party resides in. Then there is a mountain of legalese, stipulations, lots of money turning hands benefiting your lawyers as a company’s such as Amazon’s are salaried or possibly on retainer. At most, you might walk away with a NDA and the problem “magically” disappears into a settlement thin air where most problems of this magnitude die a mysterious death. The public never finds out about this pattern of behavior, because that’s how the wealthy often operate.
Unless there’s pending litigation in which a round of funding or disclosure to investors is at stake, they might make a quick catch and kill. And, I would be surprised if this wasn’t a semi-routine sporting event.
I don’t know the situation, but if the books are still live on Amazon (which they are at time of this writing,) then I suspect there might be a bigger fish to catch. All I can say is that I found out today, contacted KDP immediately (they said they couldn’t do a thing to help,) and then I filed a copyright infringement report. They said it would 1-2 days before they’ll have a decision. It was both easy and not easy, and quite frankly I can’t trust them given my prior experiences. But you know what? They can afford to take better preventative measures. I found this information within a matter of seconds, and it appears far from isolated. So I have no sympathy for negligence if this is what it amounts to.
I highly recommend taking a moment to check out Julie’s blog and and if her amazing writing is any indication of her illustration skills (which I’m pretty sure are—she has great portfolio too,) then her books are probably of the same high quality.
Aside: I’m really starting to suspect that maybe this is somehow related to my Art Nouveau Coloring Book title being swatted over a month ago on false copyright violations and having been removed without any due process by Amazon’s Content Review team. Julie also had this happen to her as well. Just like she said in her writing, I was also deeply traumatized by KDP’s actions. In fact, I don’t know if I’ll ever get over that awful experience and here I thought I was alone. I was hoping it would be a one off thing, but according to her writing the swatting happens to her every year.
