Best Selling Author Begs You Not to Buy His Stolen Book

Scam Artist Publishes Book Illegally, Then Sells it on Amazon

Sam Smith
Marketing genius Seth Godin is begging everyone not to buy his book which has been possibly illegally published. To help make sure that you won't by his book, titled Everyone's An Expert (about Something): The Search for Meaning Online , he is giving it away for free. Why? Because a scam artist published the book and is selling it. Apparently, Amazon is even sending out sale letters to people that never asked for them.

Seth Godin is a talented writer that chose to give his book a creative commons license. A creative commons license restricts some or none of the rights associated with a project. This atmosphere helps others to build upon another's work or platform so that progress can be made and mankind can better itself. Unfortunately, this atmosphere is also ideal for scam artists that wish to technically abide by the law in order to escape punishment. It is unknown how many books have been pirated in the past without notice of authors and bookstores. This is also a major problem for the software industry which also utilizes the creative commons license.

The book, Everyone's An Expert (about Something): The Search for Meaning Online, was a book that he wrote in 2005 with the intention of making it free to the public. However, the book has been published and someone somewhere is profiting by it. Seth Godin has no idea who the publisher is and therefore can't contact them. However, he is fighting back by giving copies of the book away for free, which disables the ability of the publisher to receive large amounts of royalties from the pirated book sales. Seth Godin also apologizes for any inconvenience but also advises buyers of the book to return it.

The book Everyone's An Expert (about Something) can be downloaded from Seth Godin's Blog at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/02/please_dont_buy.html. The e-book is in Adobe Acrobat format and weighs in at 1,634 KB.

Seth Godin received a MBA from Stanford. Business Week called Godin the Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age. He is the author of seven books, most of which are best sellers, including the Big Red Fez, Purple Cow and All Marketers Are Liars. His book Unleashing the Ideavirus is the most popular e-book ever. It was downloaded one million times and appeared as the Amazon's Japan best-seller list and number five in the United States, as well as being featured on The New York Times and USA Today.

Published by Sam Smith

married two sons   View profile

  • Seth Godin, marketing expert, is giving away one of his books to prevent criminals from profiting.
  • The book is being pirated and sold on an unethical basis.
  • It is hard to estimate how many books have been pirated in this way during the last year.

8 Comments

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  • Bailey Landon 2/18/2007

    Question: How does Seth know that the book is out there, being sold and bought, yet not know who the publisher is? Is it in ebook form also? Or a hardback book? If it's in print form, one simply needs to look at the book or in it for the publisher's name. At any rate, it's a horrible thing to happen to someone.

  • nyjdmr 2/18/2007

    The internet is a great tool, but there is always going to be somebody who has to ruin it for the rest of us. This was unfortunate but at least the author noticed it quickly and took action. Poor guy!

  • janet 2/16/2007

    o my!

  • browser 2/16/2007

    Douglas Rawlings predicted this ten years ago. His book was called "Moths to the Flame."

  • Rose Hunt 2/14/2007

    That is terrible.

  • Sophia S. 2/14/2007

    Thanks for the heads up!

  • Angela England 2/13/2007

    Thanks for posting!! :-)

  • Heather B. 2/13/2007

    Wow, that is HORRIBLE that someone would do that!!!!

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