Dear Fortune: I Could Have Told You That Years Ago

People are spamming books now? Well duh! Fortune may have just realized it, but I knew it a while ago. When I was sending lots of stories to Nifty, I remembered being notified to check Amazon because some idiot was stealing stories off of Nifty and publishing them on Amazon and making money off of other people’s work. Unfortunately, that’s what people do! Have you ever typed twitter wrong in your browser? I know I have. I accidentally put three t’s one time and that led me to another site. Fortunately, I didn’t think it was actually twitter related so I closed the window and signed in to the real twitter. People do things like this all the time. I’m a nobody, so no one wanted to buy lustyville.com but me, but if I had even a hint of fame, some person could have bought my name and made me pay them for it or come up with a new name. It sucks, but it’s possible and I vaguely remember hearing a story about that happening to a radio talk show host.


Fortune is only taking notice of the “copycat” books on Amazon because the copycats are of big name, bestsellers. I hate to be an ass, but I blame the consumer way more than I blame Amazon. If I’m looking for Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James, then I’m not going to buy Thirty-Five Shades of Grey by J.D. Lyte. I learned this lesson way back in middle school and the incident didn’t involve copycats, but rather two books that had similar names. I was supposed to read Boy’s Life by Robert McCammon, but I ended up reading This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff. I was happy when I returned to school in the fall and discovered that about half of us had done the wrong summer reading. Needless to say, I learned my lesson and I learned it well. I check the title, author, and publisher if necessary, hell in college, I even checked editions. I’m not willing to make that mistake again.

I know that I should have some compassion, but I’m not feeling very compassionate this evening. I don’t have sympathy for people who make mistakes like these.

Status: Not sure how I feel about the people who publish the copycat books.