#i still haven't forgiven her for 'william's wife'

[acrossthewavesoftime]

They took it down!

After 6 or so emails written to Amazon via two of their e-mail addresses, several of them being returned to me with a notice simply telling me I would have to log in to file a report (I don't use Amazon, by the way), Amazon appear to have taken my complaint seriously.

Their handling of the issue by never actually replying and only someone repeatedly hitting a button to send me two variations of the same standard message about logging into my account/them being unable to identify my account each time I tried to contact them (I could tell since as soon as I started directly addressing the name of the person supposedly handling my complaint, they started leaving the field blank and accidentally copied the salutation in a second time) on one of the addresses was far from friendly, but apparently my persistence was rewarded with swift removal.

However, Plush Books, the alleged publisher of many if not potentially all of the works affected, are still allowed to continue to operate on Amazon and their 20+-page catalogue still features a few titles with covers suggesting these might be other plagiarised fan works.

If you're an author of fanfiction or original fiction published on sites such as Fanfiction.net or Archives of Our Own and want to check whether your work has been plagiarised, a lovely, supportive community of fannish creators has created this spreadsheet (expanding) with all works that have been identified so far.

Even FicLab, whose software was used to download the stories and put them into a publishable format, have put out a statement and help guide for affected authors, which you can find here. I had contacted them, too, and was surprised by the friendly and helpful message I received.

It is sad that there are people out there who try to make money off of the labours of love of others (not to speak it being illegal to sell fanfiction, anyway).

But while this find did rock my already shaken faith in humanity, my heart was warmed by the fannish community looking out for each other, regardless of interests or fandom. Without a lovely person on AO3 who, aware of the mass-plagiarism, ran my story through the list because they apparently liked it so much they remembered it and then sent me the kindest long message explaining the matter at hand, I would never have known. I have never before had been in contact with this user, nor have they ever commented on my stories. And then there are all the wonderful people who helped create and edit the spreadsheet or informed others via social media.

This goes to show that perhaps, there is yet a glimmer of hope for humanity, that there are people with good intentions who help and look out for each other- thank you to all of you.

In order to shield myself from future nasty surprises, I have however deleted 2 original works from my AO3 account. I don't want to find out I've authored a, as the cover claimed, "number one best selling novel" by chance yet again.

My anxiety at finding this out has finally dissolved, though I am still angry at the person or persons behind Plush Books for hurting fannish authors and trying to make money off other people's intellectual property.

The only thing I am a bit disappointed about is that now the story is taken down, you can no longer look it up on Amazon, where it was placed just above a book by Jean Plaidy with a similar title...

So I just learned thanks to a helpful fellow user that someone has taken a story from my old, barely active AO3 account and is selling it as an eBook on Amazon.

Please, fellow authors both active and former, check your works for similar copyright infringements and report them.