“Interesting” Foreword

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Way back in April 2010, BC author ‘Koalas’ shared ‘Him Lady or She Male’ on this site. It’s still here, in fact.

Or, if for some reason you would prefer to give £5.92 to a thief, you can buy it from Amazon, where the same text has appeared as Girl By Accident: TRANSGENDER TRANSFORMATION by Selena Jeffries.

Of course, plagiarists are nothing new: there are dozens of stolen stories on Amazon at any given time and it’s only your efforts to give them 1* reviews that shut the thieves down. This one is a little different to the average rip-off, however, in that the “author’s” foreword is particularly interesting.

Quote:

To Chris Archer and the old lonely deviant losers at
Bigclosetr my #1 fans, I have been writing for 8 years
and honestly, I was getting bored but you have
motivated me to up my game!

Nice people, these plagiarists! Chris and I thought you should know.

Bx

Comments

Speaking as a publisher...

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erin's picture

I have twice had to prove my rights to publish something on Kindle.

Once because an author had previously self-published a shorter version of the same story under a different name. Kindle has never accepted the proof on this one, so it remains unpublished, including the previous version withdrawn by the author.

The other time was Melanie Brown's story A Modest Proposal which is also the title of a satirical essay by Jonathan Swift that is in the public domain and obviously not the same text!!!!

On the other hand, I have had occasion to complain and get taken down five plagiarized books which had been disguised by doing a search and replace on the letter "p" and the combination "bl" substituting Cyrillic characters that look similar. Huh!?!!

Kindle also took a book down because someone complained because of too many misspellings -- it's mostly in dialog, a kind of visual representation of an accent. A lot of it, granted, but JEEZ, anyone at Kindle ever hear of Sam Clemens?

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Not just Mark Twain...

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Lucy Perkins's picture

Jeff Torrington and James Kelman wrote fantastic novels, written almost entirely in Glaswegian dialect. Not to mention Iain M Bank's classic novel "Feersum Enjin" which took me three goes to understand, but when I did, wow
All the above were published in paper books, back in the day.
As Mencken is supposed to have said ".No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the people "

"Lately it occurs to me..
what a long strange trip its been."

This book is still up.

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This really grinds my gears as it seems you have to buy it to post a message that this is theft.
The reality is that Amazon is a party to the theft by allowing it to continue when they are on notice that it is plagiarism and can confirm that fact with ease - but they just can't be bothered.
This is crazy because their whole business model should be about protecting author IP, not ignoring it.
I have mention this before, but there is such a thing as criminal breach of copyright and the FBI have kicked down doors on behalf of the film and music industries, but authors have insufficent influence to get this kind of action.
Maryanne

You can review on Goodreads without purchasing from Amazon...

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bryony marsh's picture

I share your sense of outrage. Amazon appear to have decided they don’t care who benefits from the sale of a stolen story, as long as they get their thirty percent.

Today, Chris identified another batch of stolen stories, taken from authors we know and love.

https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/69080791-chris-archer

Sugar and Spiiice – TG Fiction by Bryony Marsh

Come on Amazon

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Angharad's picture

do your duty and stop these copyright thefts, I'm sure if something of Jeff Besos got plagiarised they'd do something.

Angharad

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