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here is the OFFICIAL letter from amazon saying someone else claims ownership of my story

11/16/2018

9 Comments

 
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:
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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:
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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: 
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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. 
9 Comments
Jeff Dixon
11/16/2018 01:42:27 pm

Jason this sucks so much I can't even begin to express how pissed off I am.

Recently, I started looking into how some Indie authors in other genres are gaming the system because two authors I was reading at the time had all their work pulled from Amazon and I wanted to know why. There are some really despicable tactics being used by people who can't be content with whether or not they succeed, but everyone else has to fail too, I guess.

What chaps me even more, even though i haven't had the time or inclination to actually listen to any of LitRPG's podcasts, I did look into them and the reviews on Amazon, and from what I saw, I mostly agreed with their reviews. It feels almost like a betrayal of trust to find out about this smear campaign. I'm probably who you're talking about and yes, it REALLY pisses me off that they'll take some reasonable similarities and turn it into an accusation that you stole Luke's work. By the way, for people who don't know it comes down to a freaking goblin attack in totally different circumstances. Like goblins aren't one of the biggest tropes in RPGs. There might be some similarities, but it's sort of like saying you're plagerising Tolkein because you have Elves, Drawves, and Trolls in your book and there's fighting.

All I can say is I'll continue to help however I can and am seriously considering finding and writing both authors to find out what the hell their problem is. I just don't want to make things worse.

Best regards,
Jeff

Reply
Jason Cheek link
11/17/2018 09:38:38 am

Ask the asshat that saying I cut and paste the text of another writer into my works, you know him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ4Pm2uySNk&feature=youtu.be

A bunch of online bullies.

Reply
Sam Taylor, Jr.
11/17/2018 11:12:46 am

No plagiarism here. Just a fantastic 3-book series that I devoured in like 2 days.

The attack is completely baseless, and if you let it stop you from reading Cheek's work, it's your loss.

Reply
Jason Cheek link
11/17/2018 02:57:01 pm

Thanks Sam, appreciate the good world. If you don't mind, please leave a good word on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H35XRLZ/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i1

Now I can get back to writing book four! Hoping to have it out by the end of the month.

Reply
Susan J
11/24/2018 09:45:19 am

Ramon Meija, or someone else (?), posts reviews as LitRPGPodcasts. I thought advertising in reviews was unacceptable. This is clearly a brand promotion, not a personal reader review. I don't think it carries over to Goodreads. Hmmmm... another 'policy hint'. Don't know how to get Amazon to take a look. I did click the "Report Abuse" button, but don't know if anyone would catch the obvious.

Reply
Jason Cheek link
11/24/2018 10:07:45 am

Yea, I've sent several complaints in but nothing seemed to help. I even complained back to the same email I received the apology from Amazon. As soon as these reviews showed up on Amazon, I received these on Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2538603899?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2530321235?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1

Noah Cohen actually refused to allow any comments against his post.

The effort that they've put into blocking anything I write is quite unreal. At first I thought that this was just me, but I've had comments from other authors that have experienced this same thing and other readers who've seen Dave, Adam, LitRPGPodcast and others slamming new authors that post in LitRPGSociety's group.

Thanks for the support against these guys. It means a lot to me.

Reply
DA Rasmussen link
10/9/2021 07:19:17 pm

I'm dealing with this exact same thing right now. But for some reason only the hardcover was targeted. The other 2 formats are fine, thank God. But yes I know your pain. I hate this. I'm switching services and boycotting them once I'm able to figure out where the delete profile button is.

Reply
Jason A Cheek link
10/10/2021 02:17:17 pm

I'm sorry to hear that DA. I don't know your unique situation but I can say that it should work out. Luckily, Amazon will do an internal check on your book and as long as they show that nothing was plagiarized and that you can prove that you own your book (I would send them copyright that you did for your book), everything should be fine. In that way, I will say Amazon is fair.

It's weird that one type of book was targeted and the other wasn't. I've seen that occur if you were using createspace previously. That's because the books aren't exactly linked together. Also, I'm sure this can happen on any platform.

The sad part is you're stuck in many ways of going with Amazon. I don't know if you're self-published or not, but that's where, I will say, Amazon rocks. Not having to be forced to go through the "gatekeepers" to get your book out is huge, but how Audible and Amazon takes their cut is upsetting.

Good luck. I do my best to get the word out amongst my fans to leave good reviews for the authors they love. In this way, it helps to stop some of the other crappy review bombing attacks these bad actors like to do.

Also, many in the gamelit/litrpg community is aware of these guys games and their false accusations only go so far. In many ways, if they are trying to attack you online, the controversy will bring you fans. From my experience, as long as the accusations are false, readers are smart enough to realize the truth and will support you.

Jason

Reply
Lhynzie link
4/13/2022 10:02:26 pm

Awesome content. Quite interesting and very useful. Thank you for sharing this wealth of information. Thanks for the great read. Kudos!

Reply



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