bookinistika.com: Pirating site heads-up!

Thanks for the heads-up. This needs to be better-known.
 
Hm...looks like the offending website is down! Yay! Good work one and all!

Now off to write a near future short story about how to real make these types of websites a living hell for the owners...

Nope, it's still there. I will say this, if they have no scruples about selling someone's copyrighted material, what happens to all those credit card numbers and personal information they acquire? Even filling out a form to challenge them gives them a LOT of info. Best thing you could do is report them to your law enforcement's cyber crime/commerce division, and perhaps their own ISP.

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There’s a “DMCA” form to fill out at the bottom that’s supposed to make them remove your books.

I personally wouldn't use the form on the site - all you're doing is providing the pirates with your personal information.
 
There's only two reasons they want you to email them.

1) To harvest your email address and any other personal data

2) To prolong the duration of this site for as long as they can. By encouraging authors to email them, rather than companies, it aims to try and attract less "big" attention. They can also string it out by removing some products and saying "ahh but we are removing them when requested" etc... Again its all tricks and tactics to prolong how long the site can last for before its taken down.


Don't forget they are not in any way acting in good faith; they outright stole all that content and are putting it up for sale purely for them to profit from it. Not publishers, editors, authors, bookshop staff. No one in the whole chain is making anything except the scammer.


Best defence is report it to the big publisher houses who have more likely got resources to get it knocked down. Of course sites like that won't die forever, they'll vanish and remake themselves over the weekend and be right back at it. People running sites like that expect to be taken down. They are prepared with ways to ferret the money into accounts that are safe from backcharges (whilst the account that is linked will likely be abandoned); with alternative hosts, IP addresses and website names.

As an author the best defence is to produce a quality product and market/encourage your fans to buy from authentic sources and to always discourage piracy like this.
 
2) To prolong the duration of this site for as long as they can. By encouraging authors to email them, rather than companies, it aims to try and attract less "big" attention. They can also string it out by removing some products and saying "ahh but we are removing them when requested" etc... Again its all tricks and tactics to prolong how long the site can last for before its taken down.

I agree. I emailed my publisher and told them that this was going on - I did a quick check and almost all of Snowbooks' fiction was up there; mine, Bryan's and dozens of others. Hopefully SB can sort it out and bring it down en masse. However, even SB are pretty small fry in the industry, and I suppose a proper fuss won't be kicked up until a big 5 player gets involved.
 
Search for book titles, name searches don't seem to work.

Yes, that. It helps a bit in some cases to add all or part of the author's name to the title, but author alone won't get it.

I found Blood Under Water with just that, but hadn't tried any others.
 
The website is currently hosted by Cloudflare, so I'd recommend filing a DMCA to them:

If you file your DMCA through Cloudflare and they continue to the host the website, that would make them liable for legal action against them.
 
The website is currently hosted by Cloudflare, so I'd recommend filing a DMCA to them:

If you file your DMCA through Cloudflare and they continue to the host the website, that would make them liable for legal action against them.
Thanks @Brian G Turner, I'm more happy dropping them an email than the site.
 
I've found most such sites to be respectfully responsive when you file a DMCA.
However; I would agree that you want to use a specifically sheltered contact email for this.

The larger problem is--what form of file they have been distributing.
The unsettling and almost flattering thing I found was that within a few months of publishing my first novel there were various groups in a number of public platforms that had users asking where they could get a free copy of my book electronically.

Shortly after; one of the users[or at least a similar user name]of one of these, posted on a similar website that allowed people to post work for points and then sort of trade for other works. Anyway, what I'm leading to is that no matter how many of those DMCA complaints you file--if a copy has gotten into the hands of someone who thinks they can disseminate it indiscriminately it might be hard to control.

I almost was tempted to have the DMCA built into the electronic file--however there is that old saying about how we have locks and other security to keep honest people honest. The real thieves will find a way....
 
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