- Has your book been posted
in places without your permission?
It's time for a DMCA take down.
Boom!
And if you have no idea what that is
or what to do,
well, this video is absolutely for you.
(upbeat instrumental music)
Hey, there I'm Julie The Book Broad,
the Founder of Book Launchers,
a professional self-publishing services firm.
From time-to-time,
one of our fabulous authors comes to us and says,
"My book is here and I didn't do it."
From time to time,
our team actually finds a book
on one of the book pirate sites.
And every once in a while,
it can also happen that we go to republish a book
with changes on Amazon and they refuse it.
Saying that it's online somewhere else
as it belongs to someone else.
Egads.
That's when you know you've got a pirate problem.
- Ha-ha!
Jack Siegel.
Ha-ha-ha.
That has got to be another pirated book.
- Ah-ha-ha-ha.
- Oh, and side tip.
set up a Google alert for your book
title and your name
'cuz that can alert you when a book
or your name is on the internet somewhere,
and it's useful for tracking,
and finding media appearances,
book reviews and book pirates.
All right.
So if you found your book
on a site out there right now,
and you're wondering how to proceed,
let me help you.
Now first,
don't freak out.
My own personal perspective on book pirates
is that they're not piloting your book
if nobody wants it.
So hurray!
You have something this popular enough
to be stolen. (chuckles)
But also your goal is to reach readers, right?
Someone out there is helping you reach readers.
So you don't need to exert too much energy,
anger or whatever strong emotion you feel
when you first find out.
I'm not saying leave it up there
so someone else can profit from your hard work.
I'm just saying there's no need to lose sleep
or seek dark revenge.
If your book was the next
in a Blockbuster series,
well, that's a different thing.
But if it was, you'd also have a team of lawyers
at your disposal to handle this.
Chances are,
this is more of a nuisance than anything else
as far as impact on your book business goes.
Now, let's talk about what you need to do.
It's called a DMCA take down.
A DMCA take down notice
is basically when you get infringed upon,
inform the person business, web host
or internet service provider also called ISP
that they have material on their site
that is infringing on your valid copyright.
Here's how to go about that fund.
Contact the email address on the website
where you found your content.
Firmly request the material
be taken down.
If no response within 24 to 48 hours,
which is quite common,
go to WhoIs.com
and search the name of the website
to try to get contact information
for the servers.
You'll find a whole bunch of information
in that search
but you want the host server.
There should be contact information
or when you know the host server name,
go to the host server's website,
and look for something about report abuse,
and fill out that form.
Most of them will have something
for copyright infringement,
and or DMCA violations.
Have the links where your pirated information is,
and the links showing the content belongs to you,
like your Amazon link or your own website.
Sometimes you'll have to do this
a couple of times
because the first contact
may not actually be the host,
and sometimes there's other service companies
ahead of it.
So be prepared to get an email
directing you to contact the actual host.
Once you have the contact information,
you should follow their abuse reporting process,
and send a DMCA take down email notice.
You may also need to follow-up
with another letter.
Now you're probably wondering,
"What should a DMCA letter look like?"
Well, it's simple really.
You address it to the person
you've got the contact information for,
and it should say the purpose
of this letter is to inform you that I,
the name that appears on your copyright page
reserve and own all rights
to your book title,
which was published wherever else
your publishing company has published it,
and give them your publishing company name,
your ISBN and the date first published.
And then include links below
showing the origination of that publishing.
And then you wanna state the use of my contact
on the website where you found it
is infringing on my copyright.
My contact information
as the copyright holder is as follows,
and then you include your email and your phone.
The above reference copyright works
that appear on the website
for which you are the designated DMCA agent
are not authorized by the copyright owner,
its agent or by law.
"I declare under penalty of perjury.
This notice is true and correct,
and that I am the copyright owner
entitled to exclusive rights,
which I allege are being infringed."
And then sign it.
Usually the above steps are enough,
but if there is no response,
then you can escalate
with a second letter and just add a little bit
of text to make it sound a little scarier.
So you would add text saying,
"This is a notice in accordance
with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998
requesting that you immediately
cease to provide access to copyrighted materials.
I have evidence and believe
that your entity is engaged
in the use of copyrighted materials.
Namely, my intellectual works as listed below,
and whereby the infringing material
appears on your website."
If nothing's happening after the above,
then there's one more step you can take.
You can head on over to this website right here
IC3.gov
and file an FBI IC3 report.
Send the DMCA to the parties involved with a copy
of your FBI report.
That usually shakes them loose.
Now you can also ask Google to break the link
so it doesn't show up
when someone searches for your book title.
It's similar in that you're filing
a DMCA request with Google.
You can see on this page
that Google will support the request.
You won't be notified when it's done
but you'll see that it's not indexed anymore.
Hopefully, you don't ever need this information
but bookmark this video just in case you do
or share it with a friend.
So you all have it.
Are there other ways you've found
to remove pirated content?
Go ahead and post a comment below.
And when you comment the day a video is released,
you get entered to win some of our sweet
#NoBoringBookSwag.
And when you comment almost any day,
I almost always reply.
So go ahead and try it.
Now, you might be more curious
about copyright after this video.
So check out this video,
all about copyright pages in your book.
And this one on filing copyrights.
Both are pretty great if I say so myself.
So see you there.