On March 20, Book Division Co-Chair Aleah Barley, joined Authors Guild Executive Director Mary Rasenberger and a number of Authors Coalition member organizations on a conference call to explore ways to stop plagiarism on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and Kindle Unlimited (KU) platforms. The call was in preparation for a possible letter writing campaign by ACA member organizations telling Amazon to stop selling plagiarized books. The groups are also arranging a conference call with Amazon. Rasenberger said the most pressing concerns are:
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- The way KDP and KU are set up, which attracts scammers who take advantage of weaknesses in the system to repackage other authors’ books and anthologies. They pass them off as them as “new” works.
- Scammers use click farms—low-paid workers hired to click on paid advertising links—to make it appear that fake books have more downloads than those of real authors.
Amazon needs to step up efforts to identify plagiarized material, using both Artificial Intelligence (AI) and company readers, and to block offenders by closing their accounts as soon as possible. Anyone with questions or concerns regarding plagiarism on KDP and KU should contact Aleah at alrb06@gmail.com
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