I saw MY book for sale on the web and not by me

[jillsy]

I own a small publishing company with my partner and we publish books he authors. We just found one of our books for sale by a large online vendor. They claim to have new books shipped and sold by THEM. They allow others to sell new and used merchandise through their site, but they always clearly state who the seller is. They do list the correct author and publisher, but they're Canadian site lists the same book with the correct author and another publisher ("Western Reserve Pr").

First of all, has anyone ever heard of this publisher? I've searched online and only found Case Western Reserve University. They do have a printing center, but I would think the publisher would be listed as Case Western Reserve instead of just Western Reserve.

We have contacted the online vendor and they're not being very cooperative. They claim we can let them know if we "suspect" there is anything wrong, and they will investigate. No matter what the outcome, they will not tell us the results of the investigation or who is supplying them with OUR books.

We are the only supplier of new books, so we can't think of any legal way this could have happened. We do wholesale our books to a few stores in our area, but we do not give the typical 45%+ discount so it wouldn't be worth their while to sell their books to the online vendor who we know requires such a discount. We suspect our printing company or one of its employees could be responsible since they have our files, but we can't find out if the online vendor won't tell us.

How can this be right? The online vendor is pretty much saying they'll protect their supplier over us even though their supplier is likely committing a crime. I fear the only way we can get to the bottom of this and stop it is to pay a ton of money to hire a lawyer and take legal action. We are small and trying to grow, and having to pay that kind of money would likely put us out of business. However, if we can't find out who is doing this and stop it, customers will likely find our book at the big vendor's site and buy from there instead of us. Our only advantage right now is that we can ship out our books more quickly, but the big vendor has a lot more exposure than we do.

I would appreciate any advice on what options we have at this point. Also, if anyone knows who "Western Reserve Pr" is, please let us know. Thanks in advance for taking the time to read this and for any help given.

[rmet4nzkx]

I did some research but it was difficult without knowing the name of your publishing company. I couldn't find anyhting that actually came up for Western Reserve Pr, it is possible they corrected it. What is the name of your company?

[jillsy]

Dear rmet4nzkx,

Thanks for your reply. I did finally locate a Western Reserve Printing in Hudson, OH, but they don't appear to have a website. It seems that only the Canadian website of the online vendor offering our book lists it as being published by that company.

I apologize, but my partner doesn't want to give out our name just yet. We just found out about this yesterday and we're just trying to figure out what happened and what we can do. In case we're wrong and there is some logical (and legal) explanation for all of this, we don't want to slander anyone and cause legal action to be taken against us. That's why I didn't give the name of the vendor either. I hesitated even to mention Wester Reserve, but I hadn't been able to find out who they were and really wanted to know.

Please don't be offended by this. I really do appreciate your trying to help and can probably give you other helpful information if you tell me what you need. Meanwhile, I'll work on my partner about revealing other info.

Thanks so much for what you've already done. I would imagine you're a busy professional so I appreciate your taking the time to look into this matter.

[rmet4nzkx]

Dear rmet4nzkx,

Thanks for your reply. I did finally locate a Western Reserve Printing in Hudson, OH, but they don't appear to have a website. It seems that only the Canadian website of the online vendor offering our book lists it as being published by that company.

I apologize, but my partner doesn't want to give out our name just yet. We just found out about this yesterday and we're just trying to figure out what happened and what we can do. In case we're wrong and there is some logical (and legal) explanation for all of this, we don't want to slander anyone and cause legal action to be taken against us. That's why I didn't give the name of the vendor either. I hesitated even to mention Wester Reserve, but I hadn't been able to find out who they were and really wanted to know.

Please don't be offended by this. I really do appreciate your trying to help and can probably give you other helpful information if you tell me what you need. Meanwhile, I'll work on my partner about revealing other info.

Thanks so much for what you've already done. I would imagine you're a busy professional so I appreciate your taking the time to look into this matter.

When I searched I found a link to "A"- UK but the link to Western Reserve PR and author With a last name of "K" was no longer there so perhaps they are in the prcess of fixing it. I did contact a publishing company with what appeared to have the correction and they knew nothing either, so without any facts I guess you will have to wait. They said that "A" usually fixed things but it took some time.

[jillsy]

Dear rmet4nzkx,

Thanks for the info.

Could you or anyone answer some questions based on a general scenario? A large company gets a supply of books or the electronic file of a book which they can print on demand. At some point, they find out the supplier did not legally own the books/electronic file and therefore did not have legal right to sell them to the large company.

Is the large company legally bound to report the supplier to the authorities?

Is the large company legally bound to tell the legal owner the illegal supplier's identity if the legal owner requests it?

The online vendor I spoke of is being so uncooperative that I'm sorely tempted to reveal their name, but I'll refrain for now. I just ordered 10 copies of the book as a regular customer. None of our wholesale customers has that many books on hand, so if we don't get an order for 10 books and the online company manages to ship 10 books to me, we'll know for sure the copies are illegal. Then you can bet I'll be back here spreading their name all over!

The online company also has their own printing facility. So it is possible they have the electronic copy of our book and will print 10 copies. The book is listed as shipping in 1 to 2 weeks, so we know the company needs time to either print the books or get them from their supplier. Our books have the name of the printing/binding company on the back cover, but the address is old since they have relocated since the book's printing. So it will be interesting to see what's on the back cover of the books I receive.

Anyway, I'm sorry I can't reveal more about my company, etc. I can tell you we're in New York State and the online company is in Washington State. We create books in Adobe PDF format and then give the file to our printer in Vermont for printing/binding. So the printer has the means to print more books from the file or sell the file to someone else to print. We give him the file on disk; we don't transfer it electronically.

It looks like you went to a lot of trouble so thank you very much for doing so. I'll reply if I get more info I think may be helpful.

[rmet4nzkx]

You are welcome.

[jillsy]

OK, I'm so fed up now I'm just going to spill the beans...

First of all, after many phone call and emails, and many hours, we thought we had gotten to the bottom of this late last week. It turned out the online company (Amazon) had just gotten listings from Ingram and Baker & Taylor (we never listed our books with either of these, by the way) and listed our book knowing it wasn't available and never would be. We talked to a person in the copyright office who claimed it's perfectly legal for retailers to list products they don't have and will never have. The reason Amazon.ca had our book listed as published by Western Reserve Printers was just a code mix-up at Baker & Taylor. Western's code is similar to that of our printer. Amazon said they would remove the listing and it appears they have.

Today we found we have more trouble. Two more of our books are listed at Amazon. Not only that, they actually stole a product image and the description for one of the books from our website! It's like they're just thumbing their noses at us now.

Anyway, my company is Bloated Toe Enterprises (www.bloatedtoe.com). We publish our own books and do not deal with big companies like Amazon because they want huge discounts. They can't sell our books unless they obtain them illegally; however, they can direct traffic away from our site and make people think they may be able to get our book at Amazon or other online bookstores.

I put a review up under one of our books (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/156...832846?ie=UTF8) telling all that the book is only available from the publisher and will never be available new from Amazon. It appears there now, but I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon removes it at some point. Not everyone is going to bother reading the review, either.

I just assume we're helpless here. Amazon knows they're huge and can just do what they want. We're too small to touch them. If anyone has any ideas, please let us know.

Thank you.

[rmet4nzkx]

You sure told them!