Monday, October 3, 2016

The World of Amazon Kindle Can Be a Shady Place

I've heard of shady dealings on Amazon before but it was a couple weeks ago that I saw such a thing with my own eyes.  First I downloaded this book called Gender Bender by "Claire Bottom."  Generic title, shitty author pseudonym, but it was free so I downloaded it.  Here's the description:

It's Taylor's birthday and his one secret wish is about to come true...

Taylor's body is magically replaced with a gorgeous blonde bimbo. But she only has until midnight to seduce a man or else she'll turn back.

A few days later I noticed another book called Gender Bender by someone named "Kimberly Rough" with the description:

It's Taylor's birthday and his one secret wish is about to come true...

Taylor wakes up to find his body magically replaced with a gorgeous blonde bimbo. But she only has until midnight to seduce a man or else she'll turn back.

Yes, it's almost the same description.  And looking inside, it's the same fucking book!  Only with a different shitty pseudonym.

Oh but hey it gets better!  I found yet another copy of the same fucking book only with yet another shitty pseudonym!

The description is slightly different:
It's Taylor's birthday and his one secret wish is about to come true...

Taylor wakes up to find his body magically replaced with a beautiful woman. But she only has until midnight to seduce a man or else she'll turn back.

"Beautiful woman" instead of "blonde bimbo" but otherwise the same as "Kimberly Rough"'s description.  Oh and the latter two even have the same cover graphic, just with different fonts.

And those three nearly identical descriptions are pretty much bullshit.  The first sentence is true, but he doesn't turn into a "blonde bimbo."  He turns into a brunette.  As for the "she has until midnight to seduce a man" all she does is having kinky sex with her stepfather while hoping he gets her pregnant.  Ewwwww.  Nasty.  I mean I know the stepfather isn't a blood relation but it's still yucky to think about getting nailed by your dad, let alone having him put a baby in you.

If those links above don't work, it means Amazon took my report seriously.  If the links are still there, they didn't.  When I saw the second version of the same book I thought maybe it was just plagiarism but when I saw the third one, I think it's pretty clear that this is some "author" trying to generate business by putting the same book out there in at least three different names.  Of course it wouldn't be a surprise if the story were plagiarized from someone else.

UPDATE:  Yesterday I was updating my website and on one of my books, wouldn't you know I found a fourth version of that bookAnd then a fifthAnd a sixthAnd a seventh!  Mercifully that is all I've found, but it wouldn't surprise me if there are more of it floating around.

Makes me glad I got the one for free so at least the "author" isn't making any money.  Anyway, it's always good to remember that shopping for Kindle books can sometimes be like driving through a bad neighborhood at night.  Buyer beware!

Meanwhile, Amazon's thugs are stomping another of my books:  Transformed for Mother's Day Too.   I came home one day and saw that it was blocked.  Only later did they send the stupid boilerplate email saying there was a "content violation."

The thing is, I have no fucking clue what they're talking about.  This isn't erotica.  It wasn't filed under the erotica category.  There's no sex, no rape, no bestiality, no incest, or anything besides maybe a little bit of language.  It's basically a riff on Freaky Friday, which I'm sure Amazon sells on their site.

It just drives me crazy because they never tell you why they do this shit.  They just hide behind their boilerplate legalese.  And at the same time they say you can resubmit it (which I did that day) but it's kind of hard when they don't tell you why they blocked it in the first place.  All you can do is guess and hope for the best.  But really of all the books I have for sale, that's the one they go after?  It doesn't make any freaking sense to me.  A reviewer even said, "Very sweet. A real charmer. The only TG story I can imagine even my mother would have enjoyed."  That's how non-offensive it is.  It's so goddamned annoying.  I said it before:  Amazon hates sellers.  Whether you're selling a book or a laptop, whether you're me or Hachette Publishing Group, they'll stomp all over you if they feel like it. When is someone going to give them their comeuppance?

1 comment:

Cindy said...

Sorry to hear about the book being blocked. Innocent authors get caught in the net unfortunately.

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