IWSG & Piracy Update

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The cohosts this month are Mary Aalgaard, Bish Denham, Jennifer Hawes, Diane Burton, and Gwen Gardner!

How am I feeling at the moment?

Not as stressed as I was a week ago!

Monday night, after a week of torment, iBooks finally pulled my pirated book from their site. As far as I know, all the authors whose books were pirated have been pulled.

Lessons learned from this experience:

1. If you aren't following yourself on BookBub, do so. That's how I found out my book was on iBooks.
2. Document the writing of your story as you go along--post little snippets on social media. This helps to document that you're the author because you have a "paper" trail, of sorts.
3. Introduce your characters over time to your followers, whether on social media or in your newsletter. Once again, it leaves a trail documenting your creation of the book.

I contacted iBooks and asked them what I could provide to help prove my case. I offered screen captures of the numbers 2 and 3 above. I also offered to provide them with a copy of the invoice for my cover, from my two editors, copies of the critiques from my critique partners, emails from my advance review team for the contest I held where they searched for typos, and the contract I have with a narrator to create the audiobook.

I also submitted the copyright paperwork for the book. I will be sure to do that from now on before release.

Have you ever had your material pirated on a legitimate website or *gasp* plagiarized? 

If so, how did you handle it?

Piracy Update

Do you know any of these authors? I've attempted to contact them all. I've confirmed that four of us have been pirated by this Digital Unicorn Bay "publisher."

It wouldn't hurt to check with any author friends to have them check iBooks for pirated works there.

Sadly, my pirated book is still on iBooks.

Some of us are tweeting about it and could use some retweets, if you're willing.

Mila's Tweet

My Tweet

Piracy

I am so frustrated right now. My newest book came out last week under my imprint of Emerald Arch Publishing. My book's in Kindle Unlimited and therefore exclusive to Amazon.

BookBub sent out its newsletter announcing it to my followers there. Good thing I follow myself. Look what I noticed in the email.

Say what? iBooks? It's exclusive to Amazon--you can get into lots of trouble with the Zon if you've got a book in KU that can be bought somewhere else. I clicked the link, and this is what I found.

Notice the publisher isn't my imprint.

I saw red!

I managed to find a number for iBooks (that was no easy matter). It took a while because the first person I spoke with wasn't sure what to do. Eventually, I got to someone who was able to register my challenge and sent me an email with a link to submit it officially.

I also had to track down a  number for Amazon to let them know the situation and that I was working on getting that pirated copy down.

And I submitted that url to Blasty to notify Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and the site hosting the infringing content.

I also took to social media to let others know. My book is one of three that were written in this world and released that day. One of them is also on iBooks under that publisher, so at least now she knows and can take action too.

I then took the afternoon off and came home to submit the copyright for that and three other books that I'd been meaning to but hadn't gotten around to. FYI--your work might be "copyrighted" as soon as you write it, but if you ever need to challenge it in court you'll need it official with the Library of Congress. I found this out when Rachel Ann Nunes began her (unfinished) journey against plagiarism.

Resources:

Submit a Copyright

How to Submit a Copyright Under a Penname

Indie Author Self-Defense: Piracy, Plagiarism, and Impersonation (Part 1 of 3)

Rachel Ann Nunes Lawsuit

I'll keep you updated.