Best Selling Author Begs You Not to Buy His Stolen Book

Scam Artist Publishes Book Illegally, Then Sells it on Amazon

Marketing genius Seth Godin is begging everyone not to buy his book which has been possibly illegally published. To help make sure that you won't by his book, titled Everyone's An Expert (about Something): The Search for Meaning Online , he is giving it away for free. Why? Because a scam artist published the book and is selling it. Apparently, Amazon is even sending out sale letters to people that never asked for them.

Seth Godin is a talented writer that chose to give his book a creative commons license. A creative commons license restricts some or none of the rights associated with a project. This atmosphere helps others to build upon another's work or platform so that progress can be made and mankind can better itself. Unfortunately, this atmosphere is also ideal for scam artists that wish to technically abide by the law in order to escape punishment. It is unknown how many books have been pirated in the past without notice of authors and bookstores. This is also a major problem for the software industry which also utilizes the creative commons license.

The book, Everyone's An Expert (about Something): The Search for Meaning Online, was a book that he wrote in 2005 with the intention of making it free to the public. However, the book has been published and someone somewhere is profiting by it. Seth Godin has no idea who the publisher is and therefore can't contact them. However, he is fighting back by giving copies of the book away for free, which disables the ability of the publisher to receive large amounts of royalties from the pirated book sales. Seth Godin also apologizes for any inconvenience but also advises buyers of the book to return it.

The book Everyone's An Expert (about Something) can be downloaded from Seth Godin's Blog at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/02/please_dont_buy.html. The e-book is in Adobe Acrobat format and weighs in at 1,634 KB.