Mod hat on here - It has just been brought to our attention by our member SolZephyr that the website inamebooks.com is a phishing site. They advertise books for sale (and SolZephyr's book is one that is being advertised) but they don't actually have books for sale. They require you to sign in and give credit card details and email addresses in order for you to 'order' the books they 'offer' ...but they are simply harvesting buyer's details. Obviously, don't attempt to obtain books from them. But if you are one of the authors affected, you might want to lodge a complaint—although they have not actually pirated your work, so you're not losing out on sales. Here is the information from an Author's Guild spokesperson as given on Facebook: Thanks to @SolZephyr for bringing this to our attention.
this is one of many ... its really not worth worrying about, since it doesn't in fact sell books its not going to canabalise your sales. In fact even actual pirate sites don't really hurt authors badly because people who download pirated books were never going to buy them from amazon or kobo or wherever, and people who buy legitimate books won't go to pirate sites because they fear the lack of legitimacy and the potential for malware and or phishing. Worrying about piracy or making complaints about it is a waste of time that would be better spent writing
I know it's not hurting sales now that I know what the site is, but I still wanted to bring it to people's attention. I know I freaked out about it when it was brought to my attention, and so did the person who warned me. In case anyone else stumbled onto it, I didn't want them to go through the same stress I did (I legit thought I'd been pirated at first until @jannert got on the case). Also, it looks like action is already being taken against them. The site itself is still up, but it seems that the link to its credit card phishing is now blocked, as are some of its malicious popups, so hopefully it soon won't be anybody's issue anymore.
It was actually our administrator, @Komposten, who had access to the back-end information about this site, and confirmed that it was not legitimate. So thanks to Komposten for that! Books DO get pirated (I have a Scottish friend who had that happen not all that long ago—his out-of-print historical fiction ended up getting sold, without his knowledge, as digitalised eBooks on a site in Australia!) so it does pay to be alert. If a site appears to be selling your book without your knowledge, you have every right to investigate.
Those credit card phishing sites pop up again and again. Take one down and another one is up taking it's place a week later. That is not the only site I've found "offering" my books in an attempt to steal info. Also, I have been pirated. I think romance is particularly prone to it. Epub.pub seems to have every romance. I haven't looked at it more than a second though so maybe it has other genres. I'm not worried. I've been told by people much more experienced and successful to not worry. Like big soft moose said, they aren't stealing potential buyers because these are people who are not willing to buy books for whatever reason. No one is selling my book though. That certainly would piss me off and I'm sure Amazon wouldn't be happy either since I'm supposed to be only on their site.
no but there's not a lot of point is expending energy on it... there's not just this one, both actual piracy, and pesudo pirate phishing sites are legion... be aware of it by all means but there's not a lot of point in spending much time trying to get your book taken off a pirate site
Why we calling it "ph" fishing? Does it have something to do with the band Phish? I'd rather listen to a convention of Somalia and Nigerian scammers give their sales pitches than go to a Phish show.
That's just what that kind of scam is called. It's for historical reasons more than anything else. Here's an article if you're interested in that kind of thing. The Origins of Phishing
Interesting. Apparently hackers like to replace the "f" with "ph." An homage to "phone phreaking." Learn something new everyday... thanks!
