What to Do if Your Book or Content is Illegally Pirated: How to Handle Copyright Infringement and Send a DMCA Takedown Notice

It is a sad reality that books, articles, images and videos are illegally copied every day, and reports of pirated books have increased in recent years. If this happens to you, there are steps you can take to protect your intellectual property and get it removed when it is illegally replicated.

The following details what to do if you find your book content is being sold illegally on Amazon or Apple Books, if you discover an unauthorized book summary for sale, and what to do when you discover your article or other content published on a site without your permission.

What to Do if Your Book is Illegally Pirated and Sold on Amazon

Last year, a member of our community reported that her entire book on leadership had been copied and was being sold on Amazon illegally. If this happens to you, you can report copyright infringement to Amazon using this form.

Amazon says it responds to copyright infringement claims within 48 hours, though online reports indicate responses taking a week or more. Filing an infringement claim doesn’t mean the offending listing is removed immediately. Amazon will first contact the seller and give them a chance to respond and prove they have the right to publish the content. A seller can appeal your claim, causing Amazon to come back to you and require you to prove the work is yours. This process is frustrating and can take several weeks to reach resolution, though ultimately the offending content should be removed from Amazon eventually.

Send a DMCA Takedown Notice to Amazon or Other Entity

You can also send a DMCA Takedown notice to Amazon, known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or have an attorney send a DMCA notice on your behalf. In fact, you can send a DMCA Takedown notice to anyone who illegally reprints any of your intellectual property. This includes articles you’ve authored, videos content, images, and other work you have produced. For example, if you discover an article you wrote published on another website without your permission, send a DMCA takedown notice.

How a DMCA Takedown Notice Works

A DMCA takedown notice is a formal legal document that requires the recipient respond “expeditiously.” While you can file a copyright infringement claim with Amazon, Apple Books, and other entities through their standard protocols, sending a DMCA notice is a critical step if you find you need to take legal action, and businesses of all sizes are required to respond to a DMCA notice in a timely manner.

Most recipients of a DMCA notice will remove offending content within a few days, although larger entities like Amazon, Apple Books and Google may take several weeks.

Some offenders may not realize they have violated copyright laws and simply assumed they could repurpose content found on the internet. To be clear, nobody is allowed to reprint an article, book, image or video without express permission of the copyright owner.

If you file a DMCA takedown notice with any entity and they don’t respond within a period of several weeks, you can pursue legal action by retaining an intellectual property attorney to assist. Fortunately, most of these notices are effective and legal action isn’t typically necessary.

By the way, members of the Nonfiction Authors Association have access to a variety of legal templates, including a free DMCA takedown notice. Not a member? Register here.

Send a Copyright Infringement Notice to Amazon’s Copyright Agent by Postal Mail and Email

You can also send a copyright infringement letter, or better yet, a DMCA takedown notice to:

Phone: (206) 266-4064

E-mail: copyright@amazon.com

Amazon indicates your notice to the Copyright Agent should include the following:

A physical or electronic signature of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright interest;
A description of the copyrighted work that you claim has been infringed upon;
A description of where the material that you claim is infringing is located on the site;
Your address, telephone number, and e-mail address;
A statement by you that you have a good-faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law;
A statement by you, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information in your notice is accurate and you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the copyright owner’s behalf.

Understand How Third-Party Book Sellers Work on Amazon

You may notice third party sellers listing your books for sale at prices that are lower or higher than your set retail price. This is not a violation of your copyright. Amazon allows anyone to sign up for its used book marketplace and sell books.

Secondhand book sales will not provide any compensation to the publisher or author. However, some independent book sellers list books for sale and drop-ship new copies from Ingram. In this case, you will receive your standard compensation.

There is nothing you can do to prevent third parties from listing your books for sale. Think of it like a used bookstore. These businesses have a right to resell used merchandise and may also sell new books through proper distribution channels.

How to Get Illegal Book Summaries Removed

There are legitimate services that offer summaries of popular books, such as Blinkist and Soundview Book Summaries. Services like these are subscription-based, so readers subscribe and pay a monthly fee for access to a catalog of brief book summaries that highlight key points from the book.

Legitimate book summary services team up with publishers and self-published authors, offering licensing agreements for downloads based on a tiny percentage of the revenue earned from the subscription service. The compensation is low—pennies per title—but can expand the reach for books. The idea here is if summary readers like a book, they will in turn purchase the full version.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of so-called publishers producing book summaries illegally. Earlier this week, a member of our community discovered that a summary of his book is being sold through Apple Books by a publisher named Slingshot Books.

Author Mark Paul reached out to Apple to inquire about this unauthorized version of his book—The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told—and received a canned reply from Apple suggesting he file an official content dispute report with Apple. Over a week later, the book summary is still available for sale on Apple Books, though we can assume it will be removed soon.

If you ever find your intellectual property being unlawfully sold on Apple Books, you can send a DMCA takedown notice to Apple’s Copyright Agent here.

How to Remove Pirated Books in Other Countries and Related Content Violations from Google

I’ve personally discovered my books being sold in PDF format through websites offering free or low-cost book downloads in exchange for an email address. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to pursue legal action against sites like these when based in non-US countries. However, you can report them to Google and attempt to get them removed from Google’s search directory. Submit a copyright infringement report to Google here.

Important: Make Sure Your Book is Registered with the US Copyright Office

While putting a copyright statement on your work provides some level of protection if someone illegally reproduces your content, the only way you can pursue actual legal action against copyright infringement is if your book manuscript is registered with Copyright.gov. It costs just $35 to register your work and is an inexpensive form of insurance to ensure you can pursue legal action if needed. This is an essential step every publisher and self-published author should take before your book is published.

How to Monitor Your Content for Copyright Infringement

All authors should use a tool like Google Alerts, a free service that allows you to monitor keyword phrases across the internet. Start by creating alerts for your author name and book title(s). You will receive email notifications whenever your name or book is mentioned anywhere online. You can also create alerts for article titles or a unique phrase from your book or article so you can be notified if your work is ever published on a public website.

Take Solace and Trust Your Readers

I take solace in the belief that most of my readers aren’t scouring the internet looking for free versions of my books to avoid spending $20. It’s usually obvious when books are pirated because they often have homemade-looking book covers, so the hope is that readers will be skeptical and move on.

As for websites offering pirated books, they are rarely professionally designed and often look suspicious. If readers want a book badly enough to exchange an email address for a free download from a sketchy-looking site, perhaps they aren’t your ideal readers.

While it’s frustrating and time-consuming to deal with copyright infringement issues, most of them ultimately get resolved within a few weeks.

Please Note: This article does not constitute legal advice. You should talk to a qualified intellectual property attorney for assistance.