Readers please pass on this information that Amazon is again offering one of my FREE eBooks as a Kindle download and charging for it!
Please share this post so that people are warned. The last time this happened with 10 Things I Hate about ADHD I only discovered it via a google search because it made it onto one of their bestseller lists. This time 7 Crucial Tips for Parents and Teachers of Children with ADHD is the victim of being illegally uploaded and sold as an unauthorized Kindle download! Someone is profiting from my work which I give away for free. I do not sell my free eBooks and I have not authorized my free eBooks for sell!
The advice I have been given is to stop offering free eBooks. Is that really what I should do? This is frustrating and mentally exhausting. Amazon is a site of trust with an unfortunate crack in their window that pirates are exploiting.
What do you think of this? What would you do?
In the last email from Amazon they wrote that they trust that it was the end of the matter after they took down the first free eBook illegally posted as a Kindle download. They did not offer compensation for the work that had been sold, or let me know who had done it, or how much they had earned.
Should I stop offering free eBooks?
What’s also interesting is that 10 Things I hate about ADHD and 7 Crucial Tips for Parents and Teachers of Children with ADHD have had tremendous success as free downloads. The first one with nearly 40,000 verifiable free downloads and 7 Crucial Tips catching up and will probably surpass the other at its current rate. That’s not counting how many people share via email or download via share sites and P2P networks etc. This is interesting because it seems there are groups of pirates that seek out highly downloaded free eBooks and then upload them to Amazon as Kindle downloads to profit from them.
Please pass on this post of warning to others. This is NOT about ADHD, this is about unauthorized selling of free eBooks on Amazon. If we don’t do something about it, then who in their right mind would offer free eBooks anymore? *Bottom line is that pirates are taking advantage of the Amazon Kindle system. Amazon did take down the first instance that I noticed a little while back. I have the utmost of respect for Amazon, but this has been, and is, frustrating and emotionally taxing. The blame is on the pirates who are taking advantage of the Amazon system. It seems Amazon needs to do more to validate and authenticate that the uploader(s) has the legal right to sell the work. This is now the third (3rd) time. I simply cannot continuously monitor amazon for these occurrences. Ultimately, readers do not deserve to be had and give their hard earned money unknowingly away to pirates.
Click the like button and please share this post.
Many of us are getting upset, with due cause, at how the internet is losing its ability to sustain the ‘free’ market, such as with articles, news and free eBooks like the ones I give away. This post exemplifies one of the reasons why that is happening. If you want to maintain at least some of the internet’s free market, then please share this article, like it and take actions in the ways that you can. Eventually most anyone trying to help others by giving away things that are free, but are being stolen and sold will decide trying to be generous might not be worth it. That may seem the opposite of what most people consider to be pirating, but that’s the internet, turning things upside down, not always for the better. Protect the freedoms that you value.
*This post has been slightly edited, as I was too upset when I first posted.
Bryan
