Earlier this year, self-publishing author David Goggins—who has sold millions of copies of his books—filed a lawsuit against Amazon to recoup damages from the sale of counterfeit books through the retailer. It reads, “Each of these bootleg sales unjustly stole revenue from Goggins. Amazon, however, received revenue from each sale, just as if Goggins’ authentic products had been sold.” The lawsuit remains in limbo as Amazon tries to move the case to arbitration.
Goggins is hardly alone in his complaints—all types of publishers and authors have long suffered from the sale of counterfeits on Amazon as well as distribution of pirated content on major platforms like eBay, Etsy, YouTube, WhatsApp, and various social media sites.
Last week, the Book Industry Study Group hosted an informal meeting to discuss what remedies are available to publishers and authors who discover counterfeits or pirated works circulating in the market, typically through online retailers and major tech platforms. Expert Roger Naggar was on hand with more than 20 years of experience in supply chain management in both trade and educational publishing settings. He currently works as senior director of publishing operations at Macmillan, a Big Five publisher.
Physical counterfeiting is when a bad actor produces a facsimile of your book based on your digital files. Naggar said the biggest tell of such activity is price undercutting: You’ll see the book out in the marketplace at a less-than-believable sale price. One can also spot counterfeits by doing some test purchases from the seller and checking the book. (Goggins did exactly this and showed his readers how to spot counterfeits in social media posts.) Counterfeits will differ in materiality: the paper quality, the cover finish, the cover color, the cover boards, headbands, and so on. “Those kind of materialities become integral in being able to identify a legitimate copy versus a counterfeit copy,” Naggar said.
Side note: As far as this BISG discussion was concerned, physical counterfeits aren’t the same as fake and copycat books discussed earlier in this issue, where bad actors mimic a popular title but use a different subtitle and different author name. Copycats may or may not offer quality information. It’s also a separate problem when a self-publishing author makes use of a well-known person’s name (like Barbara O’Neill) in their book title without licensing or permission. There are also in-between cases, as with children’s author and illustrator Chris Van Dusen’s If I Built a Car, published by Penguin Random House; he discovered a counterfeit that is essentially trying to be the same book, but it’s still different enough (different title, different author name) to cause real headaches in getting Amazon to act.
So what’s the remedy? First, as Naggar said, you need evidence of counterfeits, as described earlier. Then it’s necessary to approach the seller of the counterfeits and make them aware. Some sellers don’t know they’re selling a counterfeit product, as they may buy in bulk, buy used books, or buy remainders. Exacerbating matters, sometimes counterfeit products offer the same or similar quality as the real thing. For paperbacks in particular, Naggar has seen high-quality products that look like legitimate copies if not compared to an actual exemplar copy. One resource to help textbook publishers identify counterfeits is stopcounterfeitbooks.com.
Amazon’s third-party marketplace involves counterfeits of all kinds, including books. But getting Amazon to act on third parties who sell counterfeits is not, as most people know, straightforward. Naggar said that cracking the code at Amazon is difficult: “Continual conversation with Amazon is typically needed” in addition to perseverance. One attendee mentioned that in some cases Amazon has declined to remove counterfeits from sale due to insufficient evidence; Naggar recommended this person talk to people on the phone or “get humans involved.”
Naggar mentioned the possibility as well of doing inspections at Amazon’s warehouses when publishers have identified a large swath of product that’s counterfeit. “You’ll need to work with your Amazon representative to walk into their warehouse and sort through a third-party marketplace product,” he said. “There are ways. I’m not going to say it’s easy.” An Amazon representative was present for the entire discussion and offered to help those in attendance escalate their cases and take down third-party counterfeits; the rep also mentioned efforts by Amazon to implement tech-based solutions to get at the “root of the problem.”
Digital piracy is when pirates use various websites, platforms, and tools to distribute illegitimate digital copies. Publishers may hire third-party companies who specialize in discovering, identifying, and taking down pirated copies in the market. Unfortunately, issuing take-down notices to very large-scale piracy efforts like Z-Library is fruitless and requires grander action. Such repositories are not hosted in the United States and aren’t required to comply with US law and regulation, Naggar said. Unfortunately, there is regionality to such piracy. Nagger explained that some countries are “unfriendly” to the US and want to exploit its IP. (It’s not just a book publishing issue, either.)
One participant said they’ve seen an increase in “micro-piracy.” This is where individual students or professors privately use social media channels (like WhatsApp) to offer or distribute free copies of materials. Naggar said these instances can be much harder to deal with. “You have to be a little more ginger about it [as compared to] institutional piracy. You’re talking about individuals now. … There can be a PR backlash, depending on how you approach those kinds of things.” Some wondered if university inclusive-access programs (which offer all required texts to students at an affordable price) is helping ameliorate both counterfeit sales and piracy, but it’s too soon to say.
Bottom line: Naggar says both counterfeiting and piracy undercut the results of any publishing company, although just how much depends on the type of publisher. He’s seen it comprise a percentage of revenue in the single digits, which can add up to large dollar amounts. However, he said, fighting piracy and counterfeiting “takes resolve, and you can be fatigued by it all.” He said platforms don’t identify repeat infringers as robustly as they theoretically could, at least in his opinion. “There are large tech companies that have dropped the ball on that kind of initiative in various places, whether it be physical counterfeits or digital piracy. Repeat infringers on large tech platforms are able to open up accounts again and again and again.”
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
