caffienekitty | SIGNAL BOOST - PLAGIARISM: I'd like to say I'm flattered but...

I've just received a PM from someone on fanfiction.net:

ETA: Putting some things to condense space on f-lists.

Subject: STOLEN FIC

Hey!!

I just found our fanfiction on amazon to buy. Someone called Brian Lewis is selling it under the name "Supernatural: Hell Inn".... it is an exact copy of your story. Please go and check it out on .

You are the second person now, he also published other fanfiction!

Please, please, check it out!

The problem is to confirm this I'd need to buy the eBook. It galls me a little to have to give the guy money to find out if he's ripping me and other people off, but primarily (and quite ridiculously) it's not feasible for me to afford the purchase right now. [snip personal details]

The Amazon page does say however that if you have a Kindle and an Amazon Prime account that you can download the ebook for free. Does anyone have this access available and can take a look? He's got a bunch of other ebooks up from Supernatural and several other fandoms (it looks like he posted them all on this past Sunday). If it's the case with this one that the stories are plagiarized, the rest of the ebooks are likely similarly plagiarized, and if so, the word needs to be spread.

~~It really needs to be confirmed before anyone goes openly accusing this guy publicly online though.~~

ETA: Further info:

Hey!

Yes, of course. Here are the basic infos:

Supernatural: Hell Inn
/Supernatural-Hell-Inn-Brian-Lewis-ebook/dp/B010M4QW6E/ref=sr_1_9?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1435671036&sr=1-9

FANFICTION: When the Fiddler Stops by CaffieneKitty
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3805518/1/When-the-Fiddler-Stops ORIGINAL

(I hope allows now to send links, haven't been on here for a while :D)

It is your story "When the Fiddler stops". I only downloaded the sample, which is two pages, but they are word for word your story. (The person uploaded four other books, which are stolen fan fiction, too, I posted a link on tumblr: sorry if I posted your name, I just wanted to get it out there for the ones I couldn't find... I can erase it from the post if u want of course)

I can make a screencap from the first two pages I have on my phone if u want.

Here is the tumblr page the person PMing me has set up outlining the situation. ETA:Reposted here.

ETA2:SCREENCAPS OF THE EBOOK. (Thanks to xxxkia for posting them)
MY STORY, WHICH I POSTED IN SEPTEMBER 2007

So there's proof.

So ~~it seems~~ this guy and either another guy or a second ID of the same guy has definitely plagiarized a bunch of fanfic writers and is right now making money off their work on Amazon, so spread the word so that other people can find out if this jerk is making money of their fanwork.

If anyone knows what to do about this, that'd be really helpful.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

...uh how can he even publish the stories without the authorization of the WB/CW?! Wowzer.

I'm heading out camping tomorrow morning but if you don't have anyone that can get it for you by this evening, let me know and I'll DL it (again as much as it gals me to pay him) and read through it. Is there a place, if we go that route, that I can get a PDF of your story to compare against?

Additionally, perhaps sending a friendly email or call to the Amazon customer service line to see if theres any way they could provide you the whole book, or part of it to compare against your work? They likely won't want to be on the hook for hosting a plagiarized book.

Ok in light of your update DEFINITELY call Amazon.

Yeah, this guy is going to be in a lot of trouble with the networks as well. He's also done this with Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, and others.

I originally published the story on LJ (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) and on on fanfiction.net in 2007.

I've reposted it since to AO3, but those are the first public appearances of it. FF.net's dating system can't be messed with like AO3 and LJ's can so the date of publication is provable there. FF.Net doesn't do PDF's or downloads though, so here's the AO3 repost.

There is a sample page up that you can download for free if you have a kindle, and that is apparently straight from my story (like I say, I'd be flattered but...).

Adding: I managed to find the sample pages and tried to download them on my phone but it is region-locked to the US so it may not work at all.

Yeah I couldn't see the sample page at all on the amazon.ca website which I got redirected to either.

Well if no one else can see, and you still want someone to do a check in on it, I'll bite the bullet and get the e-pub file

I would still email Amazon your FF.net link with the publishing date attached and tell them someone else has alerted you to it, and done some research already (link to Tumblr).

Hopefully since its only been up since Sunday very few people will have Dl'd it?

There are screencaps now linked in the post. It's a direct copy.

My problem in reporting it to Amazon is I'd be using my RL identity to report it since that's what my Amazon accounts are under (so the Visa works) and I'm keeping that entirely separate from my fannish ID. I have to figure out how to do this though.

...hmmm... well the reality is that ANYONE could report the plagerism, not just you, as the author. The question would become more complicated if Amazon has received purchases and is slated to pay out the thief and chose to redirect those monies to the actual authors of the works.

I'm not sure how Amazon's customer service works, but I would have to imagine that someone SOMEWHERE there could handle this without linking it to your RL amazon account... but I could be living in a fantasy world!

It's a fanwork, and while I could REALLY REALLY use some money, I'd rather just see this guy/guys plagiarism stopped rather than get any money out of it. It's not legal to make profit from fanworks in general (except for that Kindle Worlds thing but I don't know how that works) because fans aren't the copyright holders of the original material, and using that and trying to profit from it is infringement (I think, don't know how the legal stuff works).

I don't know what this idiot was thinking. The most generous thought I can come up with is that he really needs money for medical treatment and thought he could make some in the interim between posting and discovery. Regardless he needs to be stopped. I want to post a big ranting comment in the comments on Amazon for the ebooks, but again, that's my RL ID.

yeah that was sort of my big head scratcher from the get go... how did he even GET the authorization to get this up on Amazon?

I have a feeling, given the re-blogs not the Tumblr page, someone is going to start posting comments ALL OVER the e-books letting the world know whats going on.

Either way, if theres anything I can do in the next ~8 hours to help let me know!

Someone's left a comment on Amazon about it now, though the url for the original story is messed up. I just really wish all this guy's stuff would go away.

Okay, so I uploaded the screencaps of the book... follow this link:

http://xxxkia.tumblr.com/post/122885204417/for-caffienekitty

Beyond revolting. Hells bells.

Globe-spanning psychic screaming is not in my mental purview or this person's head would have exploded by now.

Someone has left a comment at the Amazon page now, which helps.

Rihanna duct taped Floyd Mayweather's mouth shut at the BET awards

Aw, man. Why does this keep coming up?

Now I'm wondering if any of my stuff is in there-- I was pretty prolific, back in the day.

What a tool.:(

Some of them have gone 404 now, including the one that had my story in the preview, but there are still some up.

It would be wise to check, if you can get at them without giving the guy money. The tactics of these people seems to be to take older fic from people who aren't so active in their fandoms anymore, (I'd guess because they think they'll be less likely to be noticed) so you're a prime candidate, I'm sad to say.

People are scumbags. I hope you find a way to report him to Amazon. Or the CW. Or WB. Or all of them.

Some of the ebooks have gone 404 now, including the one that had my story, but the rest are still up. I'm a little worried that if he's taken them down in advance of an official notice that he may repost them under a different name, but I do have paranoid tendencies. They appear to be down right now though, so yay progress!

what a fleep-fleeping-fleeper
seriously dude?
glad to hear some of them are down! hopefully the rest follow.

It looks like all the main guy's ebooks in all fandoms might be down now. It's still galling that someone else managed to get paid for something I wrote before I ever did. :-/

SIGNAL BOOST - PLAGIARISM: I'd like to say I'm flattered but...

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