I'm the author of the said book. I spent one year and a half writing full-time to complete the book. Now, most of the copies sold on Amazon are pirated copies. I have filed copyright claims many times and Amazon does nothing. It’s a very sad story. A third-party seller can simply upload a random book or audiobook, and directly link it to your product page is very scary.
If I go down to the local farmers market and open a stall selling fake Gucci bags, with signs saying I sell Gucci bags, but on behalf of my supplier, A. Scammer, will the police leave me be then?<p>Bezos' dichotomy of at once being supplier and "simply a marketplace" when the rules favour a certain facade is absolutely outrageous.
The counterfeiting problem on Amazon has been a problem for a while. It all goes back to the commingling inventory issue which allows (and even encourages) counterfeiters to substitute their inferior goods for the real deal -- at the expense of the consumer and the producer, and to the benefit of Amazon and the counterfeiter.<p>I feel sorry for the author of this book and I wish I had a better idea about how to solve it. I'm not sure there's any other practical mechanism than to make it go viral and create a PR problem for Amazon.
Browsing tech books on Amazon it seems this issue - the default seller being a third party with a steep discounted price - affects so many tech books priced above $30.<p>I wonder how Amazon takes no action here.
Well let’s not pretend counterfeit and fraud are <i>only</i> (edit) an Amazon problem. Go to Walmart.com and search for “Pokemon” - 4 of the top 5 results are counterfeit cards. I emailed them 2 weeks ago about it, and by “them” I mean most of their executives, got a response from about it, yet nothing’s been done.<p><a href="https://www.walmart.com/search?q=pokemon" rel="nofollow">https://www.walmart.com/search?q=pokemon</a>