ANY AUTHOR CAN BE PDF-MOBI-KINDLE BOOTLEGGED ON EBAY

What do Bradley Nelson, Carole J. Morton, Elissa Braunstein and David Samuel have in common?

Being bootlegged on EBAY.

Remember the old days when somebody would simply buy a book, then re-sell it to a used book dealer? Now that there's eBay, it seems that buyers of a download think they not only have the "right" to re-sell, but to, oh, make a few extra copies as well.

This EBAY seller probably bought original downloads of things he/she was interested in: obscure self-help, poetry and non-fiction. Then?

The ad makes no attempt to disguise how the book will be delivered, or that it is COPYRIGHTED.

This seller even offers items for only two dollars.

The above book is NOT one of those "public domain" titles that eBay nickel-and-dimers often sell. It's not one of the zillion "Get Rich on Ebay" "200 Great Sex Tips" "300 Fab Recipes" titles. And neither is this one:

The seller's eclectic list seems to involve personal likes...transformed into extra cash. Just not for the author. The seller puts them up as 30 day buy-it-now, with anywhere from 2 to 10 copies available.

Ebay, the "just a venue" people, say it's up to public-spirited citizens and alert authors and publishers to stop sellers like this.

In this case, the seller is violating eBay's rule on "digital downloads." It's pretty obvious this seller has no idea there IS such a rule, and probably no idea that copying anything in this age of Pirate Bay and YouTube is actually illegal.

Sadly, all this seller probably had to do was add a caveat, "I will send this book via the mail, as eBooks downloaded from a cloud service is illegal," to keep the auctions running. At least for a while. Ebay is about 50-50 in seeing through that conjob line. Sometimes an employee realizes it's a ruse, or checks a seller's personal messages to verify that download links are being offered. But sometimes, a seller keeps going for a very, very long time and is only stopped when enough authors and publishers send a VeRO (verified rights owner) complaint via fax or e-mail.

The Fake "KINDLE STORE" is NO MORE. Thanks to Author Protests

For month after month, racking up over 400 positives, stealing $7,000 or even $10,000 in author royalties, a fake KINDLE STORE on eBay was making big money.

Who were the victims?

Richar Price, Anita Diamant, Lisa Gardner, Robert J. Shiller, Danielle Steel, Anne Tyler, Bill O'Reilly, Allison Pataki, Kristin Hannah, Jeffrey Archer, Susanna Kearsley, Jacqueline Winspear, Bonnie Biafore, Debbie Macomber, Helen MacDonald, George Hodgman, Stephen King, Dorothea Benton Frank, Joseph Finder...

In other words, a VERY wide selection of anyone whose book the fake KINDLE STORE owner thought could be easily stolen and copied.

This was happening on EBAY, with offices in Utah and California.

We're not talking about elusive torrents in Croatia or Sweden run by scofflaws.

TODAY, I can report that the fake KINDLE STORE is NO MORE.

Several authors filed complaints. It's possible that Amazon also did, tossing the final A-bomb.

Yes, there are still some weasels on the site right now, but none as bold and brazen as this seller was.

But how did this eBay account stay in business for so long?

The answer is that authors were not paying attention and the seller used a ridiculous caveat that EBAY allowed. Here's a typical ad.

You'll note the caveat loaded with lies:

"The eBook does not infringe on any eBay or Vero Rules...I am within my legal rights to resell this e-Book..."

"I am either the Author, the copyright holder, or an authorized reseller, or this item is in public domain..."

"I will send this item by postal mail. Sendint it my email...violates eBay policy."

Over the past months, some parasites and maggots on eBay have refined their games with the above caveat. This is because it IS against eBay rules to use "digital downloading," and anyone, include fans of an author, could use the "report this item" link to have the auction removed.

By claiming to have permission, and pretending to not use digital downloading, only the author, agent or publisher can report an auction and have it removed.

I literally called eBay on this. Ebay, of course, is infamous for hiding behind the Digital Milennium Act, and the line, "we are JUST a venue."

But, to do them justice, they will often see through a blatant ad that simply says "This auction does not violate rules" when it does. Ebay personnel will often note that an illegal book auction from Sri Lanka or Kenya can't possibly involve sending the item by mail when the cost of postage is more than the winning bid.

But in this case, when I called eBay, I got somebody who wasn't listening.

I asked an eBay employee (you can only reach the lowest level with an ordinary phone call) how this seller could be legit when the feedback included such lines as "I was able to download the book" and "The download link worked just fine."

The eBay employee: "That's not enough evidence for us."

So the seller could only be stoppoed by a copyright holder filing a complaint.

Guess who DIDN'T notice the ads and DIDN'T send in a DMCA month after month?

Yes, this seller, pretending to be some kind of affiliate of Amazon's KINDLE store, was pocketing as much as $10 per title.

For month after month, this seller got away with it, based on an inane loophole and authors and publishers not paying attention, assuming that eBay patrols its site (which it does not).

The seller was able to sell 40 or more "bargain" dupes of over 60 authors' works. Two examples:

Ebay bootleggers have it easy. They just go to the "usual" torrent sites (Kickass, Demonoid, Pirate Bay) or hidden forums, download the latest best sellers, and then duplicate them for profit. 40 copies of Larson's book at $7.49. Multiply that by over 60 titles this seller had before being shut down. How many termites does it take to destroy a home?

What extermination method was used to stop this abuse?

Using Twitter, a dozen authors were alerted to the problem with links to the eBay ads. AND, several e-mails were sent to Amazon advising them that since they own trademark on KINDLE, and have deals with all the authors, they CAN and SHOULD protest the abuse. While authors were losing a dollar or two in royalties, Amazon was losing a full $10 or $12 on each theft, and there were thousands of them.

Yes, Amazon can absorb the loss of $10,000 worth of sales with an eBayer taking home $7,000 or so instead. But "it's the principle of the thing." And the more it happens, the more eBay sellers will do it. And the publishing world is in enough trouble. And aren't writers and publishers a little smarter than the record labels and rock stars that let their industry collapse and let Tower Records and the other stores go out of business due to piracy?

While right now on eBay you're likely to find the top authors (Patterson, Rowling, Clancy, James, King) being bootlegged with "every book for $7.99" via download or a CD, DVD or thumb drive, even mid-level authors are being abused and it's up to them and their publishers to give eBay a look once a week and file a VeRO (verified rights owner) stoppage.

It's easy. All eBay requires is that someone in authority (author, agent, publisher) sign a form which is then on file in eBay's VeRO division. After that, all that's needed is the auction number submitted by e-mail or fax to VERO@EBAY.COM. Item is removed, usually within 24-48 hours.

The good thing about eBay, versus the torrents or forums, is that it's not "whack-a-mole." Sellers DO get suspended (case in point here). Once suspended it's not easy to get back. Unlike Google's "Blogspot" for example, eBay requires sellers to use a valid credit card. After a suspension, it's not difficult to match up the offending seller's phone number and address and other information, or see that the seller is bootlegging the same items again. Most don't even try.

A big THANK YOU to the authors and/or Amazon for putting the nail into the coffin of a parasitic vampire who had been rolling along for many many months, making thousands of dollars off other peoples' work.

This seller had 64 titles online a few days ago.

Today?

Poetry from the Inmate Who Killed Jeffrey Dahmer

Interesting….I thought that if you are a killer, you can't profit from your crime. Apparently, "I killed Jeffrey Dahmer" isn't allowed but a book of poems? That's ok. Below, a poem by Christopher Scarver, the prison inmate who killed Dahmer. It's from one of several books of poems he's selling on Amazon. You'll note the clever cover, that depicts the child behind the bars of his crib, and then the troubled child-man in prison.

Scarver was originally sent to prison when voices in his head commanded that he kill Steven Lohman. Who was Lohman? Just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. Lohman worked at the job-training program at the Wisconsin Conservation Corps. Scarver had been bounced from there, but returned demanding money from one of the workers, John Feyen. Feyen coughed up $15, which wasn't enough. Scarver blew away Steven Lohman, and when Feyen knocked the gun away, Scarver ran off. He was quickly captured and convicted.

In prison, Scarver hated Jeffrey Dahmer, and so did almost everyone else. While conveniently protected at all times by prison guards, Dahmer would say and do obnoxious things. At least, according to Scarver. This included dousing ketchup on his prison food and acting like it was blood.

One fine day, Scarver felt that he was disrespected by either Dahmer, or another inmate/murderer. One of them had "poked" him in the back. Turning around, Scarver recalled, "I looked right into their eyes, and I couldn’t tell which had done it.” Scarver went after Dahmer first, crushing the man's skull. Then he killed the other man. Conveniently, no guards were around to stop him.

Scarver has a lady named Eileen Mackin on the outside who runs a blog for him, passes messages along for him, and upped the eBooks to Amazon. You can find more at the dot.com called 414scarver-solutions. Meanwhile, a look at Scarver's fine work on Mr. Dahmer, and an example of Scarver's poetry:

The Journey To Maturity#1 and #2

Back when my balls
Were bigger than my brain,
I did a few thangs
That some consider insane.
On my journey
To maturity
My psyche was infected
By many impurities
As a youth-unguided
I collided
With temptation
And I tried it.
Now that my brain
Is equal to my balls,
In retrospect, I can see
That I was bound to fall.
As I was bumping my head
Up against the wall,
That constant ringing in my ears
Was the Prophets’ call.
On my journey
To maturity
I’ve outgrown my
Childish insecurities.
•

Guinness World Records 2015 - Shuck and Awe

Now looking more like "Ripley's Believe it Or Not," the new Guinness Worlds Record 2015 edition is loaded with eye-catching color photos and a lot of dubious achievements. In dozens of categories, you can find yourself entertained, amused, and asking yourself, "Why would I care?"

For instance, in the baseball section you'll find "Youngest player to hit 30 home runs and steal 30 bases in a season." In basketball: "Most consecutive games scoring a three-pointer." And in cycling, "Oldest Olympic road cycling gold medalist." In case you really wanted to know.

More disturbing is the competitive food section, where a variety of utter idiots engage in trivial pursuits. Gee, Michael Jenkins drink a litre of lemon juice in under 60 seconds. Ozgur Tuna (the name is more amusing than his achievement) "held 110 eggs in a basket" on a roller coaster. Another clown ate 16 cream-filled sponge cakes in one minute. In the latter case, we're not told how big these cakes were, if they were regulation Twinkies, or who decided the number should be 16, and why one minute should be the limit when, just below it, a record for hamburgers eaten (no size indicated) had to be within three minutes.

I know, this is supposed to be a browsable book of fun and amazement, and to some degree it still is. It's just that the older editions concentrated on things most of us actually cared about or were curious about, including various categories for the biggest, the smallest, or the most expensive. At one time, (the 1999 edition) a caveat for the competitive eating section declared, "The following gluttony records are historical and should not be attempted today." It almost seemed they were going to discontinue "records" that involved stupidity.

Instead, we get to see Mr. Michael Jenkins bugging his eyes and sucking a straw and holding up lemons. He's proud to be in a book that doesn't distinguish between true achievements and the pointless abuse of food resources and the encouragement of potential physical illness and death.

It's also a bit ridiculous that "world records" can be bought. For example, Davide Andreani of Italy owns "10,558 unique single brand cans" of soft drinks, and two full pages are devoted to showing all of them lining the walls of his...what, mental ward?

Seeing photos of pop-eyed lemon juice drinkers, and grubby soda can collectors just isn't my idea of a good time.

Do we need to encourage idiots to break the record for the longest black pudding (576 feet)? Or, unable to get the ingredients, try for the world's longest matzoh or breadstick? Now that we have eBooks, will Guinness have no limits on the number of individual foodstuffs they'll "recognize?"

Anyone want to break the record for "Most mentions of a brand name on Twitter in 24 hours"? That honor currently belongs to something called Pocky, which was mentioned 3,710,044 times on November 11, 2013.

Naturally the book section was an area to browse, but here, many listings weren't necessarily "world records" as much as facts. "Self-published author John Locke has sold more than 2 million Kindle-formatted eBooks...by 6 Jul 2010, james Patterson had exceeded sales of one million eBooks...the term "graphic novel" first appeared in 1976 on the dust jacket of "Bloodstar"...a total of 325 pen names were listed for humorist Konstantin Arsenievich Mikhailov in the 1960 Dictionary Of Pseudonyms."

Precision is not necessary for a World Record. "Even without exact sales numbers," we're told, "there is little doubt that the Bible is the world's best-selling and most widely distributed book..." Perhaps some irate Muslims would insist it's the Koran? At least it's not, God help us, the Guinness World Records book.

Measure of a Man: Auschwitz to the White House by Martin Greenfield

There can never be too many books about the holocaust.

Each one is a document and a testament, and another (to use anti-semite Roger Waters' term) "brick in the wall" to block out the deniers.

Documenting atrocities isn't the point of these books. It's the survival. It's the morality.

This is very well illustrated in one story Martin Greenfield tells. Martin who?

Greenfield's enough of a celebrity to get a book deal, that's who. Born in Pavlovo (once part of Czechoslovakia, now part of the Ukraine), he was 19 when he came to Brooklyn, having survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald (unlike the rest of his family). A master tailor, he would not only dress up President Eisenhower (whom he'd originally met during the liberation), but other politicians and celebrities including Bill Clinton, Gerald Ford, Patrick Ewing, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and others. His vintage designs were also used in the HBO series "Boardwalk Empire."

Naturally the most gripping part of the book involves his teen years imprisoned by the Nazis. He was not exactly wearing the heigh of couture when he was 16 and a prisoner in Buchenwald. Assigned to a work detail outside Weimar, the brutal hard work was sometimes rewarded when he could find a potato or some other edible in a field, or some discarded item he might bring back to the camp and trade for food. Repairing a building, he wandered into the cellar where he found a cage that contained some pet rabbits:

"Inside the cage were the remains of the rabbits’ dinner. I unlatched the cage and pulled out a wilted leaf and carrot nub. The lettuce was browning and slimy, the carrot still moist from the rabbits’ gnawing. Excited, I wolfed down the lettuce and tried to crack the chunk of carrot in half with my teeth. My luck was short-lived. “What are you doing?” a voice yelled."

An irate blonde, who turned out to be the mayor's wife, quickly summoned an SS soldier to punish the prisoner:

"'Down on the ground, you dog! Fast!' yelled the German. He gripped his baton and bludgeoned my back. I do not know whether the mayor’s wife watched the beating. Given her cruelty, why would she want to miss it? On the hike back to Buchenwald, I replayed the scene over and over in my mind. How could a woman carrying her own child find a walking skeleton...and have him beaten for nibbling on rotten animal food? I thought...Then and there I made a vow to myself: If I survived Buchenwald, I would return and kill the mayor’s wife."

When Buchenwald was liberated, Greenfield made his way back to the home of the mayor.

"“Remember me?!” I yelled. “Do you?!” Her blond tresses shook violently. She hid her face behind her upraised hand as if shielding herself from the sun. “You had me beaten because of the rabbits. I’m here to shoot you!” I said, sounding like an SS. “No! Please!” she quavered. “The baby, please!” I aimed the machine gun at her chest. The baby wailed. My finger hovered above the trigger."

I think the reader knows the end of this anecdote. These days, it says a lot about the Jewish concepts of mercy, compared to, say, the beheadings and beatings that are such a part of "radical" Islam.

"Never again" is a slogan that must be affirmed, and anecdotes such as Greenfield's tell us why...because we can't forget that basic goodness is foremost in our hearts. One must never forget that it takes two words, combined, to create "mankind."

The Lives of CHANG and ENG : Siam's Twins (Siamese Twins)

Looking for a freak show? This isn't it. As you might tell from the publisher (University of North Carolina) and the corrected subtitle ("Siam's Twins" not "Siamese twins"), Joseph Andrew Orser's book is a serious undertaking.

It has to be; there's usually no intimate revelations from hidden diaries or outrageously erotic love-letters when it comes to famous figures of the 18th or 19th century. A letter to the wife of Chang or Eng asking for "how is it done...does the brother close his eyes...") would not likely get a detailed reply.

Instead, author Orser fills his 280 pages with rich detail on the obvious (the origins of Chang and Eng and the sideshow career that gave them the money to settle down and raise families) and the uproar (just how do freaks from Siam fit into white rural North Carolina?)

Most books on sideshows, freaks, or "very special people" simply devote a few pages to a photo of the twins and the amusing details of births (between them, they had 21 children) and death ("Then I am going," Eng logically said, after his brother's heart stopped beating).

Orser's book studies the sociology of the times. When Adelaide and Sarah Yates married Chang and Eng in 1843, the girls' neighbors "threatened to burn down [their father's] crops if he did not promise to control his daughters." Cries of bestiality went up, and the town was labeled "a community sunk below the very Sodomites in lasciviousness." It was well enough for people to gawk at the twins up on a stage as freaks of nature...but the idea that they could marry...raise families...come and live among ordinary people? They were, after all, "monsters!"

Much of what went on inside the households remains private, although we do know some of the logistics, for example, that Chang and Eng alternated and stayed with one wife and family for half the week, and then the other wife and family. There are also some details on the nature of their physical connection (and how if Chang was tickled, Eng would also react). The fascination here is how the strangest couple of all time, from the other side of the world, came to adjust to North Carolina living. Freaks? Well, they considered themselves higher up the social ladder than that, and even owned slaves.

In handling the story of the twins, Orser strikes a necessary balance between the curiosity factor of their physical existence and the reality of their daily lives in North Carolina.

New BOB HOPE bio: Thanks for the Re-Hash of the Memories

"Hope: Entertainer of the Century" has arrived...but the question is this: does anyone still care about the memories?

Apparently on a slow news day, the N.Y. Post does. It's almost quaint that in this era of Miley Cyrus and Kim Kardashian, viral leaks of dirty movie star photos and the sordid world of reality shows...there's this headline:

"Bob Hope, sex machine, 'often cheated' during his 69-year marriage."

This is news? We're 14 years into the 21st Century, most people barely know the man who died in 2003, and his better films are from the 30's and 40's, which are in black and white and therefore unwatched by anyone under 50.

The Post breathlessly offers a quote in the book from Sherwood Schwartz (yes, the "Gilligan's Island" producer) saying of Hope, "We'd go to a hotel, I swear to you, outside his room were three, four, five young, beautiful girls waiting to be picked by him to come in...He was a star enjoying his stardom."

Let me now quote from page 170 of "The Secret Life of Bob Hope," written by Arthur Marx and published in 1993:

"'I remember,' says Sherwood Schwartz, 'there were always five or six pretty young girls hanging around in the corridors outside Hope's room - sort of like today's groupies. Since I was a virgin, I was pretty envious of all the action he seemed to be getting.'"

Yes, over 20 years ago, a book was published detailing Hope's well-known wolfish behavior. In Marx's book, Hope was not only open about all this, but comical, too. That same page, 170, has an anecdote from Gene Lester, a photographer. Gene was covering a celebrity junket and "While we were playing Dallas, Hope had two girls flown in from Houston...these two good-looking young chicks arrived." Hope dead-panned: "These are my cousins from Houston."

In 1993, Bob Hope was not welcome as a TV talk show guest. Johnny Carson had already retired. The best Hope could do was get some tribute or other for his movie work, with Woody Allen telling the world how good those films were. It was the small, maverick Barricade book publisher (run by the legendary Lyle Stuart) that offered Marx's bio of Hope. One of the vague selling points, beside the usual list of Hope conquests, and a very strong helping of Bob's ad-libs and comedy, was that Arthur dug up the marriage license for Bob and his vaudeville partner Grace Troxell. In case anyone cared. Yeah, Bob married someone, briefly, before Dolores.

The application for the marriage license is printed, in full, in the photo section that begins after page 160. The NY Post in reviewing this new tome:

"...Hope's 1933-34 marriage to former vaudeville partner Grace Troxell, which Hope's publicists denied ever took place...was revealed in a 1993 biography." Yes, by Arthur Marx. Which you can buy on Ebay or Amazon for a fraction of what the Richard Zoglin book is selling for.

Another "blockbuster" bit of news in this new book? "No marriage license for Bob and Dolores Hope has ever turned up.The lack of any record of the Hopes' marriage (not even a wedding photo) led some Hope family members to speculate over the years that a wedding may never have taken place."

Oooh. How exciting. We're supposed to be shocked or excited by something that happened about 80 years ago? And that was already mentioned in the Arthur Marx biography:

"There no record of the Hopes getting married." Marx did add that "there's no denying that Hope and Dolores are actually married. And if they're not they've been getting away with murder on their joint tax returns for years."

I recall speaking with Marc Eliot, who knew Phil Ochs and was able gather enough of Phil's "small circle of friends" to write a very vivid bio of him. He then parlayed this into some kind of career as a celebrity biographer. I asked him why, after there had been so many bios already, he had just knocked off a new one on Cary Grant. The answer was pretty much...it was something to do. The older ones were out of print.

So it is, that there have been film buffs, fan boys and publish-or-perish college professors, who scan a list of celebrities and biographies and see if they can come up with a match. As in: oh, it's been a while since a W.C. Fields book came out, or Groucho, or...Bob Hope? Unfortunately in most cases, these new bios don't have exceptional new information to offer, and there are no "juicy" anecdotes because everybody who knew the dead star is either also dead or quite senile. Who, in Bob Hope's inner circle, is still alive and was hanging around the bedroom door when he had an affair with Barbara Payton? A paragraph about this is supposed to interest people who aren't even re-playing the Tommy Lee and Pam Anderson video?

Next up from Richard Zoglin? Maybe an expose of how nasty Arthur Godfrey was? No...a little too obscure. How about how nasty Bing Crosby was? Some people might've forgotten about Gary Crosby's book, or Zog can convince a publisher that old people go to bookstores beause they don't know how to buy a used copy of a better bio on Amazon. But I wanna tell ya...