IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT - Novel stolen and sold under another name.
There has been a wave of piracy recently, and unfortunately, my novel was illicitly stolen and has been sold on Kindle (Amazon) with a different title and cover. Furthermore, the perpetrator used Chat GPT to paraphrase the synopsis and replace the characters' names.
This case is way more serious than a simple repost on an aggregator site : this fucker— I mean, this seemingly ill-natured person, has literally committed the highest degree of copyright and IP infringement that is punishable by law.
The person in question probably felt safe behind his screen, but he's a complete moron. Not only did he steal novels that aren't even finished yet (I'm not the only author who had his novel stolen), but he openly sold them on Kindle.
The moment I confirmed the infringement, I immediately called my lawyer to prepare the necessary procedures. He informed me that, if I wished to, I could obtain a court decision in less than three months that would allow us to obtain the perpetuator's banking information from Amazon's database.
No matter what service he used to cash in the money he got from his sales on Amazon (bank account, paypal, skrill, etc.), this court order would force the providers to release the perpetuator's personal information.
To make it short, this guy's identity was compromised the moment he decided to use Amazon for his scam. (You see why he's a moron ?)
Even if he used a VPN and a fake identity to create a fake account on Amazon, the money he gained through his scam is 100% traceable. As long as it's not cryptocurrency (which online payments systems like amazon, paypal, skrill, etc. do not accept), a simple court order is all that's needed to know this retard's identity ; his (or her) real name, age, bank, city of birth as well as the current country and city he(she) is living in, etc.
Of course, going down this road will take some time and I'll have to spend a fair amount of money from my own pocket on legal fees, which is why the first thing I did before starting the legal action with my lawyer was to reach out to Amazon and request the removal of my plagiarized work from their platform. I also sent a DMCA takedown notice to Google.
During the next few days, I'll see how the situation develops. Just know that I am more than ready to take legal action if need be.
Spending money on legal fees for the copyright of a web novel may seem crazy, I know, but even if I'm just an amateur author driven by passion and for whom writing is but a hobby, this doesn't mean that I'll let an idiot trample on my work, claiming ownership of my novel, and scamming (ignorant) readers on Kindle.
To prevent this from happening a second time and in parallel with the legal action I may have to start, I'll also make it harder for these pieces of sh— to steal and plagiarize my work.
Moving forward, I will be including one (or more) sentences unrelated to the story in each chapter posted on Scribblehub, Royal Road, and Webnovel. These sentences will serve as distinctive markers to signify that "this novel is exclusively published here," albeit with varying wording each time.
I'll also reformulate certain sentences to make them harder to be processed by Chat GPT (or any other AI for that matter). In the end, whoever will try to plagiarize my work again will have to spend an insane amount of time editing each chapter, even while using Chat GPT.
I understand that this may prove slightly inconvenient for you, the reader, and for that, I ask for your understanding.
Lastly, I want to remind you that my novel is accessible for free only on the following platforms : Scribblehub, Royal Road, and Webnovel, with premium chapters available exclusively through my Patreon.
If you ever come across my novel being sold under a different title / cover / synopsis on Kindle or any other book-selling platform, or if it appears on a site other than the three mentioned above, please contact me without delay:
- On Discord : nobletalon
- Via email : [email protected]
- Or through Scribblehub's private chat.
I want to express my gratitude to the kind souls who alerted me to this issue, one of whom was a reader. Without your vigilance, I wouldn't have known a petty thief was selling my book on Kindle, so thank you immensely.
- NobleTalon
nt. : I was editing Chapter 30 when this happened and I originally planned to release it today on Patreon so I could post Chapter 21 before the next week, but... I'm just not in the mood currently, sorry. I'll get back to the usual schedule from the next week hopefully. Thanks for your understanding.
nt. 2 : If you're also an author, please read this forum post to make sure that your book hasn't been stolen : https://forum.scribblehub.com/threads/list-of-suspected-piracy.15972/
Patreon
That sucks, dude, but good on you for taking it seriously and seeking legal actions. I've had several novels I was reading have a similar thing happen, but the author just gets disheartened and ends up stopping the story, removing it, even removing their account entirely, or seeming to stop writing entirely.
It's good to see someone fighting back and I hope that more writers do so.
Good luck with your legal stuff. I don't think anyone would, or should, mind you slowing down or taking a break to deal with this
Thanks for your support !
A similar thing happened with my first novel Void Rifters, but it was just a simple repost on aggregator sites. I just had to send a few emails to resolve the issue. This time, however, the guy literally stole the entire novel and sold it on Kindle under a different title and cover (when it's free to read here).
There's no way I'll let this pass.
You a chad for this! Even though it sucks that your work got stolen, it helps a lot brining attention to the situation.
Btw, I would also add a short sentence to the end of your Synopsis, which makes it identifiable. Yesterday, I found another stolen work purely because the author mentioned an ! in the title. The pirate did not remove that part of the Synopsis, which made it easy to identify the original. Maybe even just add your name at the end.
Since these people seem to literally put in the lowest amount of effort, this should make matching pirated and original versions much easier.
Thanks for the tips, I'll do it asap ! The guy who plagiarized my novel paraphrased my synopsis, but I guess it could still work against lazy scammers who just copy - paste
@NobleTalon Yeah, I even found one that left in the OG authors "This is my first story, I will try to get x chapters a week etc" , so some of them really just aren't that smart
Take the thief’s money! He made the money selling your book after all
I wish I could, but the truth is that if I take legal action, I'll lose way more money than I'll ever get back. That's why I'm waiting to see how things go over the next few days to take a decision.
To be honest, if I do decide to ask for a court order and follow the legal road to the end, it'll be mainly to find out who did that. I'm quite tired of all these scammers thinking they're invulnerable as long as they hide behind a screen.
When stealing a web novel, they're ruining the day of an author who worked hard to craft a story he can be proud to share, and more often than not, without getting nor expecting any financial compensation. As the comment above said, it's sad that many authors who had their work stolen have decided to stop writing. After experiencing the same situation, I can now understand why they did so.
@NobleTalon Well I’m not too sure how much it would take to get the money from them, but I know it would be really easy to get Amazon to charge them a lot of fees and stuff and smack them with fines, I’m not particularly well versed in copyright laws… I only know a smidgen about family law because of my mother and just a tad bit more about criminal law…