Authors up in arms as Amazon scammers pirate published book covers for notebooks

Amazon has a great deal of trouble with scammers. Most of us have probably come across suspicious looking counterfeit products, or products at prices that seem too good to be true – don’t get us started microSD card scam — but the latest racket exposed is something completely different.

Authors have reported that their books’ covers and illustrations have been illegally copied and used as covers for notebooks that are then passed on as the original book, complete with the author’s name, but with the contents replaced with blank pages.

We were warned about the scam when we came across one thread on Twitter started by author Rob Manuel in which he describes his recent experience. About 24 hours after it was published on Amazon, Manuel saw a clone of his book The Very Best of Fesshole: Britain Confesses Anonymous. This cloned book was offered at a lower price than Manuel’s original by an ‘author’ named ‘Rachid Zrika’.

Manuel discovered that “Rachid Zrika” had a page on Amazon – which has now been removed – with a handful of books under that name that were obviously cloned. Books on Amazon’s best-seller lists, including Cat Lady by Dawn O’Porter and A Ballet of Lepers by Leonard Cohen, were both listed as being written by and available from “Zrika,” and sold at a fraction of the price of the originals.

Manuel ordered a copy of the fake version of his book and shared a video of what he received.

While this fake “writer” doesn’t sell real copies of these books, they do what are nothing more than cheap notebooks for original works – and anyone who unsuspectingly bought one, either for themselves or as a gift, would pay good money for some – almost literally – a hollow facade is of the real article.

We reached out to Rob Manuel, who told us that Amazon had removed the clone from his book after he “made a bit of a fuss on Twitter”. He added: “I was worried it would show up in the bestseller lists because it’s cheaper than the real book, so people who casually pay attention to it would choose the cheap book. And those people would be disappointed with a crappy notebook.” .”

Another writer responded to Manuel’s Twitter thread to say the same thing happened to him, adding that when he contacted Amazon UK for help, he got no help because he was “only the author and not VAT registered” .

The verified Amazon account @amazonhelp then replied in the thread and included a link to a page where authors could report any breaches – but that was the extent of Amazon’s response. We asked Manuel if he had received direct communication from anyone at Amazon, and surprisingly he hadn’t, although at least Amazon removed the obviously fraudulent “Rachid Zrika” page.

We don’t know how widespread this problem is, but it wouldn’t be surprising if other scammers do something similar to “Rachid Zrika” and have their own fake author pages.

We reached out to Amazon for comment, and a spokesperson told us: “Nothing is more important to us than trusting customers and authors and ensuring that titles are authentic. We have zero tolerance for pirated titles or content and we invest in people and technology to protect our store from abuse, the marked products have been removed.”

Analysis: Do it better, Amazon

Scams like this are always disturbing, and even more so at this time of year, leading up to Black Friday and the pre-Christmas shopping season. In the rush to grab a bargain, shoppers don’t always stop to check the fine print, and they can easily be misused and left out of their own pockets.

Given that Amazon started out as a bookseller, it’s not unreasonable to expect that when you buy books you’ll get exactly what you paid for. And while it’s reassuring that Amazon acted quickly in this case, it’s also disturbing that it only did so when the matter was brought to its attention – who knows how many unsuspecting shoppers have already fallen victim to this particular scam or similar.

The usual advice applies when shopping online: whatever you’re looking for, do your research, check the fine print, and be wary of any Black Friday Deals that seems too good to be true.