The book thief

Quite recently (as in a few hours ago) a good friend of mine experienced the ugly side of the Internet. With her permission I am sharing her story with you.

Jemma Grey, whom I have mentioned before, is a budding author. Her themes are usually gothic, with vampire romance being her go-to topic. She has even produced full-fledged novels, one of which she first self-published in 2011 - My Vampire Love. Mind you, it is a rough draft that wasn't really proofread before the upload (this was admittedly from her pre-ScottyPedia era). Nevertheless it is an enjoyable read, with the revised version promising to be even more riveting.

This is the cover design Jemma chose back in 2011

Early this morning, Jemma received a message from one of her faithful Wattpad readers, who alerted her via comment that someone was selling copies of her work on Amazon, claiming it as his own. When she checked on Amazon, to her surprise Jemma found that this was in fact the case. A "Vishal Mondkar" had copied the early 2011 draft wholesale and was trying to pass it off as his November 2014- published work.

Not only that, but this Mondkar was selling Kindle version copies of the book at US $5.99 a copy. And the book had four customer reviews unanimously praising the story, while decrying its unpolished finish - spelling errors, clumsy phrasing, grammatical imbalances and other uncorrected errors. Having access to the initial draft only, Mondkar lifted the text verbatim, never bothering to proofread the work or make any alterations, including character and local place names with which Mondkar would be very unfamiliar.

As you can imagine, Jemma was horrified at this discovery! I'd love to say that she immediately enlisted my assistance but truth be told she had already contacted Amazon concerning the copyright infringement. She also decided the befriend the fraudster via Facebook in a bid to directly contact him. I urged her to start a dialogue with him in a bid to get him to say something incriminating. In the meanwhile, as an active Amazon client, I did what I could to help her cause (you can see my post here).

While that was going on, Mondkar 'befriended' Jemma on Facebook and they had quite an interesting chat. After some preliminary bluster Mondkar not only freely admitted to the plagiarism but sought to defend and justify his actions while issuing an extortion demand as well. Can you believe this guy's nerve? The following are screenshots of the exchange between them; you can see for yourself how brazen this person.

I must commend Jemma for keeping a cool head and resisting the urge to hurl some obscenity-laden invective behind Mondkar. So now she is awaiting a response from Amazon concerning the infringement, as well as forwarding the above to them for perusal. Initially she was seeking an immediate cease and desist from Mondkar and an apology to all of the duped buyers. However, I wondered aloud about how many purchases he may have already processed. If a mere 10% of buyers were moved enough to comment, that means he may have already made $239.60 from his self-confessed nefarious deeds! That represents a considerable sum that should really belong to the real author, don't you think?

I'll try to update you on the situation as it develops. Please let us know what you think about the situation via the comments below.