Weekly Writers: Proving Copyright To Amazon

It's tricky

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Sometimes whole books are illegally copied and uploaded for sale, perhaps with different titles, covers, and fake author names. That can make it almost impossible for a publisher to spot. Ripping off books is a big industry, and obviously none of the money goes to the real author or publisher, even when Amazon is informed of pirated books and (eventually) blocks them.

Amazon is doing something about plagiarism, and that’s good, though their methodology leaves a lot to be desired.

When Amazon finds books with matching content, its automated systems have no way of knowing which is the real author and who is the pirate, and so it may flag both up as needing to prove creatorship. And that’s when you get one of the dreaded emails saying you have to prove you wrote the book (within a few days) or it will be withdrawn. Worse, they will only accept certain forms of evidence, which may not even exist. As you can imagine, this causes terror when an author receives one. This is what one of their emails looks like (I received this one in 2020):

“During our review, we found content within your book that’s available from a different publisher. We need you to confirm your publishing rights before the book is made available on Amazon.

[List of titles published by Karl Drinkwater]

To publish the book(s), reply to this email and send documentation and/or verification showing you hold rights to the content. Please submit any documents you have, along with an explanation of any previously published books within 5 days. If we do not receive the appropriate documentation, the book(s) will be set to “Blocked” and will be unavailable for sale on Amazon.

Acceptable documentation may include:

• A letter from the previous publisher reverting rights back to the author

• A signed copy of the agreement between you and the author

• A signed copy of the agreement between the author and the previous publisher

• A signed letter from the previous publisher indicating that they do not object to your edition

• Documentation showing the previous publisher holds nonexclusive rights

• An email from the address listed on the previous publisher's official website indicating that they do not object to your edition

• If previously published through KDP or CreateSpace; an email from the address listed in the previous KDP/CreateSpace publisher's account indicating that they do not object to your edition

• If the author has an official website, an email from the address listed on the author’s official website indicating that they do not object to your edition

Examples of documentation we cannot accept include:

• A personal statement by you that you have the publishing rights

• A copyright application for which registration has not been confirmed

• Contracts that have not been signed by all parties”

But that list of documents Amazon accept? Most don’t apply if you are an independent author-publisher. In fact, your only option then is the final one, so I hope you have a website and own your own domain, and have set up email accounts from it, and can email them from that address. I’ll discuss websites as part of your author brand in a future post about marketing, but it just shows there can be other advantages to setting one up properly.