Posted in: Comics | Tagged: amazon, kindle, piracy

Amazon Pulls Pirated Comics From Kindle – Most Of Them

Published Sat, 10 Apr 2021 17:00:28 -0500

Yesterday, Bleeding Cool reported on a new comic book pirating twist. That someone, using multiple Kindle Publisher accounts was uploading Marvel, DC, and Image digital comic books and selling them at a price far less than the official versions, or through Kindle Unlimited funding. The listings had been up for a week, but attempts to get Amazon to respond to concerns went updated.

Bleeding Cool ran the story, and we talked to people at Amazon about the issue, sending over our findings. This morning, all the accounts had been removed. All the ones we had named. There is still one we missed for an account who really likes Godzilla, but of the other pirated comics files that had for some reason filled the Non-Fiction digital graphic chart on Amazon, there was no sign. The deed had been done. But this is not entirely new. Nat Gertler of About Comics, who reprints the non-Peanuts-work of Charles Schultz, tells us

"I've been covering what I suspect is the same batch of Kindle bootleggers for two months now when they've been uploading Complete Peanuts and the Peanuts comic books (starting with this). What happens is not that the bootlegs don't get deleted, it's that they are quickly re-uploaded with new covers and generally new authors. More recently, they've also been bootlegging Wimpy Kid material and labeling it with Peanuts in the title."

"Add to that a constant stream of print-on-demand unlicensed Peanuts coloring books, and you have a sign of some of the problems arising from Kindle Direct Publishing (which is the Amazon arm for both Kindle publishing and self-publisher/small publisher Print on Demand.)"

Amazon Pulls Pirated Comics From Kindle - Some Of Them — Amazon logo.

More for Amazon to keep an eye on maybe? Last year, Amazon joined a number of authors in tackling websites that hosted pirated versions of books, that could have been taken from Kindle files. But such is the size of the organisation that sometimes it takes a little Bleeding Cool to attract the Eye Of Sauron.

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