For those of you who are interested, here is the official letter from Amazon. Believe it or not, you can simply send in a form claiming someone stole your story and Amazon will simply block your book from selling without any proof or even asking you to show your copyright:
Imagine that. A simple accusation and boom, your book is blocked from being sold. No questions asked. No proof needed of the accusation. It is all placed on the victim to prove that they are innocent. Shame on you Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. I'm still waiting for my copyright to process my application. All that I currently have for official proof of ownership of my own work is here:
Yeah, I blocked out my case numbers. Who knows what else the trolls will try to do to mess with me. Still, I'll have to hand it to these guys. They sure know how to work the system. I checked on the processing times for the copyright office. All that they have to do to screw with a new Indie Writer is claim that you stole their work. They know the only proof you have is your pending copyright and they can easily freeze up access to your novel from new readers simply by claiming that the book you wrote is not yours. Check out these times for the copyright office to process a normal web claim:
The sad part is that it's not like you can make this any faster. Even if you pre-upload your work. The processing time is the processing time. You'd have to wait another six months before publishing your book to get around someone's hateful attack like this.
By the time you get the completed copyright proof that your story is actually your story, they've successfully blocked your book from selling for possible six to ten months. How's that for a bullying cockblock? Will there still be interest in your book by the time you get this all worked out? How can you just claim that you own one book of a another writer's three book series? You don't. You'd only do something like that if you were trolling someone who writes better than you do.
We'll see what else they try to use to harass me. The process, I think, is important to share with the Indie Writer community and to get the truth out there of these nasty practices to block access to good writers entering the LitRPG community. Make sure you follow my blog post on doing the copyright office. Here's why you need to spend the extra money for that protection.
Thankfully, I can still add more books to the series which will allow the people who current like the series to continue enjoying the work. Hell, it makes me that much more interested in getting new books out even that much quicker. Who knows, maybe when Luke sees that people are still getting their fix and following my proceeding books, he'll try the same nasty move with the other books.
I hear from so many fans of the series saying that there is nothing common between the story except that it's a LitRPG story. They post that in the books' reviews, they post on this site, they email me telling me the same thing. Sucks how a few asshats can shut down new writers just because they know how to work the system. Shame on you, Luke. Shame on you, Amazon for letting people like that get away with this.
Here is my response to Luke Chmilenko:
When I first was writing my book back in 2016 while my wife was in the hospital off and on for three months, I ran into LitRPG for the first time. I read D.Rus’s Live to Play series and the Chaos Seed series and sat down and started writing at night once I came home from the hospital to my empty house. I continued reading LitRPG during visits to the hospital when my wife was too weak to talk and I stayed just wanted to be near her. It was the only way I could give her the support that I loved her and I wasn’t going anywhere. Around the middle of writing my second book and ordering the cover for the first, I read your series along with Dragon’s Wrath and many other writers. This is all documented at that time period in email and on my personal blog.
My plan was always to release all three of my books together, since I ran into a problem with my first series taking too long to get the following book out to keep my fans interested in the proceeding book. Again, this is all documented in my personal blog. Half way through my third book, my wife was released from the hospital and I couldn’t finish the third book in series because I had to take care of her when she came home. It wouldn’t be until a year and a half later when I finally was able to catch up with my personal life tragedies and get back on track with writing.
Upon releasing the books, I did my author preface apologizing for my grammar and spelling errors and thanked the authors I really respected in the LitRPG field. For me, I like promoting authors I like and there were four writers. I was especially thankful for them since reading their books while I was sitting next to my sick wife in the hospital had touched me deeply. I actually wrote Along Kong personally and thanked him at one point which was when he told me about the LitRPG group he had on Facebook and said I was welcomed to introduce my books whenever I finally got them out. This was mid-2017.
Skip to the present. I released my three book series on September 2018 and was immediately attacked by Dave Willmarth, LitRPGPodcast (I think that’s Ray Meija), Noah Cohen, Adam Shook and one other that claimed I plagiarized your books. The decision was made in five minutes after reading the back cover of my book one. Fifteen minutes later, the posts were on Amazon and Goodreads. If you listen to LitRPGPodcast he'll say I basically cut and pasted the first half of your story into mine. Truly unbelievable and hateful accusations.
The only thing was that none of what they said were true. The LitRPG fan base have constantly replied back to these accusations saying that they were unfounded and unbelievable. Enough said this that the rating rose to 4.1 from the 1.2 that these guys had driven it down to initially with their hate. Even now, it continues to rise. I constantly hear from LitRPG fans saying they can’t believe these guys accused me of plagiarism and said please continue writing. I recently had a fan that believed the LitRPGPodcast about my book, but when he ran out of things to read, he decided to see what the hubbub was about with my novel and discovered for himself that they were lies. He actually message me, apologizing and asking to help with the grammar correction because the false accusations of bullies pissed him off so much.
I continue blogging about the false accusations and the abusive trolling with fans constantly message me saying, I’ve read both series and they’re nothing alike. I can’t believe Luke is doing such a thing. Unbelievable, right?
That is the simple truth. My series have a completely different real world, different virtual world, different rules, different gaming conventions, different flow and different characters. Hell, everything is different. The only vague similarity is that it’s generally about a group of gamers and the main character towards the middle of book one protects his people from Goblin Raiders. Nothing about the people in the story or the events happening are in anyway similar to your series. It’s like saying a main character who is a police officer or detective having their family kidnapped from the bad guys in a book or movie is plagiarizing someone else’s work with a similar plot element. It’s not or we wouldn’t have half the movies or books out that there with similar scenes.
This will all come to light as we go through battling this out. I will do whatever is needed to clear my name, since you have left me no choice. Whereas once you had a fan and a fellow writer that happily promoted your work, you now have someone that will share with the world the darker side of your personality and the hateful practices you follow. I’d like to believe this was simply a misunderstanding on your part which is why I’m writing this. I hope this whole issue is because you had some bad friends that told you some lies and got you excited about the issue and you jumped to stop what you believed was someone stealing your work without actually looking into the specifics yourself. This lack of paying to detail is going to be what bites you in the ass.
You still have a chance to do what’s right. If not, don’t be surprised at what happens now and further into the future.
By the time you get the completed copyright proof that your story is actually your story, they've successfully blocked your book from selling for possible six to ten months. How's that for a bullying cockblock? Will there still be interest in your book by the time you get this all worked out? How can you just claim that you own one book of a another writer's three book series? You don't. You'd only do something like that if you were trolling someone who writes better than you do.
We'll see what else they try to use to harass me. The process, I think, is important to share with the Indie Writer community and to get the truth out there of these nasty practices to block access to good writers entering the LitRPG community. Make sure you follow my blog post on doing the copyright office. Here's why you need to spend the extra money for that protection.
Thankfully, I can still add more books to the series which will allow the people who current like the series to continue enjoying the work. Hell, it makes me that much more interested in getting new books out even that much quicker. Who knows, maybe when Luke sees that people are still getting their fix and following my proceeding books, he'll try the same nasty move with the other books.
I hear from so many fans of the series saying that there is nothing common between the story except that it's a LitRPG story. They post that in the books' reviews, they post on this site, they email me telling me the same thing. Sucks how a few asshats can shut down new writers just because they know how to work the system. Shame on you, Luke. Shame on you, Amazon for letting people like that get away with this.
Here is my response to Luke Chmilenko:
When I first was writing my book back in 2016 while my wife was in the hospital off and on for three months, I ran into LitRPG for the first time. I read D.Rus’s Live to Play series and the Chaos Seed series and sat down and started writing at night once I came home from the hospital to my empty house. I continued reading LitRPG during visits to the hospital when my wife was too weak to talk and I stayed just wanted to be near her. It was the only way I could give her the support that I loved her and I wasn’t going anywhere. Around the middle of writing my second book and ordering the cover for the first, I read your series along with Dragon’s Wrath and many other writers. This is all documented at that time period in email and on my personal blog.
My plan was always to release all three of my books together, since I ran into a problem with my first series taking too long to get the following book out to keep my fans interested in the proceeding book. Again, this is all documented in my personal blog. Half way through my third book, my wife was released from the hospital and I couldn’t finish the third book in series because I had to take care of her when she came home. It wouldn’t be until a year and a half later when I finally was able to catch up with my personal life tragedies and get back on track with writing.
Upon releasing the books, I did my author preface apologizing for my grammar and spelling errors and thanked the authors I really respected in the LitRPG field. For me, I like promoting authors I like and there were four writers. I was especially thankful for them since reading their books while I was sitting next to my sick wife in the hospital had touched me deeply. I actually wrote Along Kong personally and thanked him at one point which was when he told me about the LitRPG group he had on Facebook and said I was welcomed to introduce my books whenever I finally got them out. This was mid-2017.
Skip to the present. I released my three book series on September 2018 and was immediately attacked by Dave Willmarth, LitRPGPodcast (I think that’s Ray Meija), Noah Cohen, Adam Shook and one other that claimed I plagiarized your books. The decision was made in five minutes after reading the back cover of my book one. Fifteen minutes later, the posts were on Amazon and Goodreads. If you listen to LitRPGPodcast he'll say I basically cut and pasted the first half of your story into mine. Truly unbelievable and hateful accusations.
The only thing was that none of what they said were true. The LitRPG fan base have constantly replied back to these accusations saying that they were unfounded and unbelievable. Enough said this that the rating rose to 4.1 from the 1.2 that these guys had driven it down to initially with their hate. Even now, it continues to rise. I constantly hear from LitRPG fans saying they can’t believe these guys accused me of plagiarism and said please continue writing. I recently had a fan that believed the LitRPGPodcast about my book, but when he ran out of things to read, he decided to see what the hubbub was about with my novel and discovered for himself that they were lies. He actually message me, apologizing and asking to help with the grammar correction because the false accusations of bullies pissed him off so much.
I continue blogging about the false accusations and the abusive trolling with fans constantly message me saying, I’ve read both series and they’re nothing alike. I can’t believe Luke is doing such a thing. Unbelievable, right?
That is the simple truth. My series have a completely different real world, different virtual world, different rules, different gaming conventions, different flow and different characters. Hell, everything is different. The only vague similarity is that it’s generally about a group of gamers and the main character towards the middle of book one protects his people from Goblin Raiders. Nothing about the people in the story or the events happening are in anyway similar to your series. It’s like saying a main character who is a police officer or detective having their family kidnapped from the bad guys in a book or movie is plagiarizing someone else’s work with a similar plot element. It’s not or we wouldn’t have half the movies or books out that there with similar scenes.
This will all come to light as we go through battling this out. I will do whatever is needed to clear my name, since you have left me no choice. Whereas once you had a fan and a fellow writer that happily promoted your work, you now have someone that will share with the world the darker side of your personality and the hateful practices you follow. I’d like to believe this was simply a misunderstanding on your part which is why I’m writing this. I hope this whole issue is because you had some bad friends that told you some lies and got you excited about the issue and you jumped to stop what you believed was someone stealing your work without actually looking into the specifics yourself. This lack of paying to detail is going to be what bites you in the ass.
You still have a chance to do what’s right. If not, don’t be surprised at what happens now and further into the future.
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