Imagine my surprise to see that someone read every page of my invertebrate glossary one day via Kindle. That’s great; I sure hope I helped some student pass his or her final exams. But isn’t it strange to read so many pages of a dictionary in one sitting? I mean … I like to peruse the dictionary of English usage, and I had a college roommate who would read the almanac for relaxation (the closest pre-internet approximation to web-surfing), but I can’t recall ever reading the whole of a reference book at one time.
What’s even odder is that I haven’t even really marketed this book, so who beyond my friends would have heard of it? Well, maybe it was one of my colleagues, thoroughly checking it out for whopping typos or misinformation, so I checked the Kindle Direct Publishing report for more information.
My dictionary-lover is in India, accessing the book via amazon.in. Although I hope the millions of biology students there buy my glossary, an earlier version of this book has been plagiarized by a certain “Lotus Press” in New Delhi already. (I asked Amazon to take it down from their site, which they kindly and promptly did.) So I have to wonder if the person “reading” my glossary on Kindle was actually copying it.
I sent a query to Amazon about this, and they wrote back saying they checked and saw nothing amiss. The associate added that it is known for people to read an entire book in one day. Yes, a murder mystery or steamy romance, but a dictionary? Well, India’s a brainy place, no doubt, so if any country is going to have someone read my entire glossary in one sitting, that’s the the one. But it’s also a good bet for the source of a pirated version. Eyes are peeled.
Categories: featured, Invertebrate Glossary, Ron Clouse
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Woah, that is strange ._. And in 1 day? Do update us if you hear things. You have honestly got me curious.
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Definitely I will, and I’m glad someone else thinks it’s suspect, too.
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Here’s the final response from Amazon:
‘After an investigation, we received an update from our technical team. The update is as follows:
We have automated tools that should detect the plagiarism of your book. We haven’t detected any such case with your book, “A Basic Glossary of Invertebrate Zoology.”
We confirm that that the ‘reader’ isn’t actually copying your book. The 225 pages read of your book is the correct data.
We do often see all the pages of new titles being read via amazon.in.’
Hmmm … it’s that last observation that has me a bit worried, but for the moment I’ll trust that some curious person in India was well served by my glossary!
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Yay, Amazon! I’m glad you’re at least a bit relieved. And who knows, that might actually have been the case! (: Thanks so much for keeping me posted.
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Great, yes, I’m choosing to be positive about this!
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