Everybody first search my books on B&N, and if you find Hephaestus Books with omnibuses of my work, go to customer service at B&N’s corporate site and write them explaining these are ripoffs and not real books. Be nice, but be firm that these are ripoff collections of Wiki articles purporting to be a book by me and that these have been tossed off Amazon and are now victimizing customers of B&N and cluttering up the search list under my name. This is the e-mail form: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/help/customer_service/morehelp.asp
Arrgh.
And the koi pond sprung a leak or something weird happened with its waterfall exit this morning. We’re down about 1500 gallons, it’s cold out there, and we don’t know why.
There ARE no calm days around here…
Wow, over 160,000 ripped off titles. They’ve been around for only a few months, hopefully the retailers will be smart enough to shut them down before they do real harm to author’s reputations and consumer confidence in ebooks.
If you do a Google search for Hephaestus Books Cherryh, you’ll get hits from pretty much all the online book sellers. Alibris, B&N, Amazon (US and UK), and many more. Amazon has 13 of their “books” just on you. Flattering I’m sure. I have posted your requested review on all of them so far, but I doubt anything short of a legal injunction is going to have much effect.
I think I wrote a “customer review” a while back regarding the false entries by Hephaestus or some other over at Amazon.
(The old typesetter in me is curious if I could fit a novel into 40 pages at 4 pt. or 6 pt. type. Not that anyone could read it but mice, but hey!) 😉
I will be home a little while before heading out in the afternoon, so I’ll login at B&N and find time to post something firm but restrained. (But likely not concise! 😉 )
@ Zette — Kat Among the Pigeons is in my ebooks to read pile. It is a large pile, but I will get to it at some point. Life has recently changed. I will be busy as all get out for awhile, a better busy than it has been in ages. After that, I may have a return to some semblance of normality in life. I *miss* reading. Your book sounded like a good read, which is why I bought it. 🙂
Oh, and — tonight is Goober’s fifth year with me, and so he’s around 5 years and 6 to 8 weeks old. He and Smokey are doing their best to look spooky, but they’re coming off more cute and clever than anything…OK, maybe opening that drawer again qualifies slightly. LOL. Busy little so-and-so’s. Let’s see, that means five years ago, the little guy christened an almost new futon mattress. It was never quite the same after. No loss, I discovered I’m not a fan of futons either…. 😉 (He was a new kitten, it was one of those things. He was suddenly relaxed and happy, and so there was this rising…. Heh. Poor little guy even managed to be contrite and chagrined.) Now he’s a refined gentleman.
Siphon: You were just doing one of those giant water clock experiments, a calenda or something. That’s what it was! 🙂 The koi were for that certain artistic flair, performance art….
Hmph. I had a fight posting an ‘appropriate review’ over at Amazon. They seem to object to having their sellers referred to as ‘scammers’. Toned it down a bit and now it’s active. One can only hope that they rapidly go the way of LLC, but it’s electronic whack-a-mole, where they seem to have an endless stream of pseudonyms for their business model.
Wow! Just searched bn.com and the ripoff came up #1. It only got 1 star – but unless you read the reviews you wouldn’t be able to tell it’s a rip off. So I complained to customer service that I was very disappointed to findBarnes & Noble supporting this type of rip-off.
Ah yes, the laws of physics—siphoning happens. But where did the 1500 gallons of water go?
The only site that appears to weed this junk out is Slashwords. Mark Coker hasn’t been one of my favorite people, but after this his stock has risen dramatically.
This stuff is important to me. In addition to publishing my own stuff and my mother-in-law’s stuff, it looks like I’m going to be the publisher of record for a half dozen other writers. I keep telling them they can do it themselves, they keep telling me they’d rather have someone who understands computers do it.
Which kind of puzzles me. What’s hard about computers?
Wayne
I sent an email to B&N’s customer service, polite, short, and clear. I wrote a customer review for one of their so-called collections. Bad for business, that publisher. — If they made it clear these were reprints of freely available Wiki articles, or if they offered up essays of literary criticism, fine and good. But don’t lead people to think they’ll get the actual works of an author…especially when that author is quite alive and able to write for herself or himself. It makes it harder for honest indie publishers or for legitimate authors. It gives a bad name to booksellers like B&N or Amazon. It’s just plain dirty pool.
I notice their book cover illustration quality has improved, which means it’s even more likely to defraud unwary readers.
With a bit of luck, someone at B&N will wake up and do something about it. Maybe at Amazon too.
Very glad to know SmashWords don’t put up with such nonsense. That gives me a better impression of them. A couple of web friends, fans turned published authors, have had good things to say about their dealings with SmashWords.
If anyone is watching this thread, could you please post the other sites you found that were carrying this crap. I want to do an update on the article, and you can save me some time 🙂
Wayne
PS: I’ve been getting a lot of hits on that article. It also made the ,a href=”http://paper.li/o_O_o_OMFG/1314082361″>Against Plagiarism automated newsletter. So there’s a lot of interest. Maybe enough to get the biggies to look at their policies.
got an email response:
We reviewed your concerns regarding books that are listed but not really
written by CJ Cherryh. Your feedback is very important to us at Barnes
& Noble and we appreciate your taking the time to send us your opinion.
We assure you that we have reviewed the issues you have raised with the
appropriate department and they are under consideration for
implementation. We truly value your patronage; your online shopping
experience is extremely important to us.
Thank you again for your comments.
I also got a response from them. Looks like the same one. Anyway, here it is:
Customer Service Mail – Order Number:Hephaestus Books (KMM32465145V95054L0KM)
Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you for writing to us about Hephaestus Books.
We truly appreciate you for taking the time to give us feedback on the
content of your recent NOOK Book purchase.
Customer feedback is critical to the success of our business, and we
rely on these feedback such as yours to help us determine what our
customers value most. We have forwarded your concern to the individuals
responsible for NOOK Books for review and correction.
We hope this information was helpful. If you require further assistance,
please do not hesitate to send us back an email or call us at
1-800-THE-BOOK (1-800-843-2665), Monday through Friday from 8AM to 11PM
EST, Saturdays and Sundays 9AM to 11PM and select option 2 for Digital
Support.
We invite you to visit our helpdesk on our website to view the list of
our helpful FAQ topics, so please click on the link below:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/help/help.asp
We apologize for the inconvenience.
May you have a great day!
Sincerely,
Alfonso
Customer Service Representative – Digital Support
Barnes & Noble
http://www.bn.com/
Visit our NOOK Support site for the latest updates and downloads at:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/support/
Original Message Follows:
————————
Order Number: Hephaestus Books
IP: 184.25.109.198
Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20100101
Firefox/7.0.1
These books are a ripoff. They contain nothing but copies of Wikipedia
articles about the books listed as titles. They have already been
chased off Amazon.com. I don’t think you should carry them.
It might be an idea to include a link to my article about the situation on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. That there is an article out there, with all of those nice screen caps might just embarrass someone into moving.
Wayne
I have heard from B&N, and we are in communication. They’re realizing, I think, that they’ve got a problem. Thanks to all of you! I think you’ve rattled the walls there.
Hmmph. “Rattled the walls?” Rest assured that your loyal readers are Filing Intent!
No reply from B&N yet re: my complaint last night.
I just posted a review:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fantasy-novels-by-c-j-cherryh-including-hephaestus-books/1106468605?ean=9781244221369&itm=4&usri=cherryh#CustomerReviews
“NOT Cherryh novels — deceptive!
This “collection” is nothing more than a cut-and-paste assortment of Wikipedia articles that you can read for free on Wikipedia. It is NOT a collection of Cherryh novels. Note the number of pages: **32**, for a “collection” that purports to include 11+ novels. Shame on Hephaestus for trying to pass this off as a legitimate collection. Don’t let yourself be cheated by them. I look forward to B&N summarily evicting this so-called “publisher” ASAP.”
Heh heh. OSG, I read your post a little too fast through not working very well trifocals, and saw “evicting” as “executing”. wishful thinking, I guess.
Heh, Kokipy. I HAVE been known to File Intent a time or two so this isn’t far off.
I got a too-generic reply to my customer service email. But as long as they are looking into it already, good.
I got a comment on my blog today from Bill Higgins, who posted a link, which lead to some other links on these “sausage machine” books.
#893 ::: Bill Higgins– Beam Jockey ::: (view all by) ::: November 17, 2010, 01:28 PM
#528 ::: Bill Higgins– Beam Jockey ::: (view all by) ::: January 19, 2010, 08:51 PM
The Worst Excuse for a Book I’ve Ever Seen
FYI – my understanding is that beamjockey is Bill Higgins LJ account, like mine is urban_terrorist.
Wayne
Regarding the problem with the koi pond — My wife and I had a pond for several years. Twice during that time, a large bush grew a root through the space between the pond liner and the plastic spout that bolted up to the waterfall/main filter housing. We were losing several inches per day. (Sounds like yours is worse.) The main roots were as thick as my thumb.
The root cause of the problem (no pun intended) was that the bolts that were underwater had rusted/corroded and that loosened things up enough that the fine root hairs were able to sneak through and then when they grew that forced the plates apart further.
I had to disassemble the bolted parts, replace all the bolts with solid stainless steel, and apply a new layer of Form-A-Gasket to seal everything. Actually had to do the same job at both ends: the waterfall, and the intake to the pump/muck filter housing.
Clarification – The first time I did the repair, I used regular bolts/nuts. These also lasted about 5 years. The second time I did the repair I made the effort to get solid stainless steel nuts and bolts. I expect that to be the last time the repair needs to be made. We sold the house about two years later so I don’t know if my theory will bear out, but I’m reasonably sure it will.
Thanks for that! I’ll keep that in my mental reference, for sure. My own problem was leaving a hose dangling in the pond—and then taking the end loose for cold weather! But your note is real useful.
I got a generic response also. Since it invited me to continue contact if I had any further problems I plan to do so until the “books” are removed or at least accompanied by a notice that they have no connection to you, CJ. 🙁
I pointed Jerry Pournelle at your site–BTW, he’d appreciate your e-mail address–he took one look, followed up with his agent, and let Harlan and Susan Ellison know about the situation. He says there are still POD copies of your works for sale by Abe Books out there.
Funny you should say that. I just made a comment on the Shejidan forum relating to The Mote In God’s Eye.
Hephaestus Books aren’t telling the public what the public will really get. If someone wants a printout on demand of a bunch of Wiki articles, say, or of an ebook, perhaps, then those are useful services and honest and up front. But one has to read very carefully to discover that’s what Hephaestus Books are selling, prints of freely available materials, and not the actual original works cited. But when that rips off both living authors and their several legitimate publishers, then Hephaestus Books need to be clear and honest, or cease and desist. Find an honest way to publish original material. If you want to make money by selling prints of materials, then fine, contract with the publisher or publishing website or author or author’s agent, and be a legitimate source. (I’m stating my opinion only, your mileage may vary.)
Here’s some information from Live Journal.
Wayne