Pirates! As a creative artist it’s the thing you dread.

At 8am last Friday morning I discovered my #1 bestselling ebook How To Sing Legato (2018) had been cloned and was being sold under six different titles by six different “authors” on Amazon, all of whom published on the same day (May 18th 2021)

The pirates hadn’t just taken all my text, they’d taken all my chapter titles and images, and even my resume, and stolen the lot. And they were charging for them on Amazon as a Kindle ebook and a print-on-demand book.

Here are two side-by-side images, left is my original, right is cloned:

And no, you don’t need to adjust your screen, the pirates’ copy has been photographed and is rotated 90%, with the image split exactly like that.

So I’ve spent most of the weekend filling in Amazon forms to get the fake books removed. And a special thank you to our Singing and the Actor Facebook Group for finding and awarding 1star reviews to most of them. In the meanwhile, Amazon will “let me know”…

How you can help

I have been given some advice though, and here’s how you can help.

If you’ve already bought a copy of the book (or found it on Kindle Unlimited), please click on one of the links below and write a review today. Reviews help my original work move back up the charts and then new people can see it’s the version to go for.

If you haven’t yet got a copy of How To Sing Legato, please choose one of the links below and buy it right now. Again, it will help me move up the rankings and make it obvious mine is the original. I’m halving the price this week only from £9.99 to £4.99 so it doesn’t burn a hole in your budget!

Here’s the book link for Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Amazon.com.au, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr and Amazon.co.jp​

Once I got over the shock of having our intellectual property stolen, I realised something. I think this is a bot, an automated system simply scanning the #1 Bestseller lists, cloning the books automatically and creating fake author accounts to obtain money from my work. And it made it feel less personal. It helped.

So join me in dealing with this bot in the only way we can – help me make it clear that the original is the one to get.

Thank you in advance

Jeremy

​

PS If you enjoy searching for pirates, search for “Legato” in Amazon’s “Books” category, and sort by publication date. You’re looking for anything published on 18th or 19th May 2021. I found six authors, can you find any more?

 

UPDATE!

It’s now Monday and Amazon have moved fast. All six of the pirates’ books have been removed. I even had a couple of emails asking whether the story was genuine?

Yes, it’s a true story of pirates on the high Cs – and here’s the evidence. I snagged four of the titles while they were still up. Notice the same book cover used twice by two different authors? Yep, that happened more than once. Hopefully that’ll be the last we hear from them.

Thank you!

And thank you to everyone who rallied around, gave 1-star reviews to the fakes and bought my original ebook. We’re already #3 in the USA (Voice Music), #1 in Australia (Voice Music) and #1 in the UK (Vocal & Singing) as a write.

I’m very grateful to have experienced how powerful a community can be against pirates.