Quote:
Originally Posted by graycyn
Yes, exactly. I was stung buying 3 Kindle books from Amazon some years ago. The Harper Hall trilogy by Anne McCaffrey.
I never read the reviews, as I was familiar with the books and simply wanted to re-read them. I didn't take a "look inside" as it never occurred to me that Amazon wouldn't have some kind of vetting procedure so that illegal copies weren't uploaded.
And while Amazon has a return policy, I didn't actually get around to reading them until my Kindle Oasis 2 arrived, about a year after the purchase.
As to how I'm quite certain they are pirate copies?
Well, how often do you see a legit, still under copyright ebook that has NO COPYRIGHT STATEMENT and NO PUBLISHER INFO within? That and all three books had an absolutely obscene amount of typos, which is why I was looking for the publisher information, as I wanted to complain!
It still bugs me to this day that I put money in the hands of a book pirate!
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As I recall, there was a lot of confusion about some of the Dragonrider of Pern books prior to around 5 years ago. The Harper Hall books were available in the UK, but not the US. Del Ray seems to have the rights to a number of the Dragonrider books, while Transworld (a Penguin company) has the Harper Hall books. I got the Dragonrider omnibus book (Dragonrider, Dragon Flight and White Dragon) fairly early on.
Really, when dealing with books by dead authors, it can be a hit or miss thing. It just depends on if there is a legit version out there and if the copyright holder keeps an eye on the major ebook stores. The only way to be sure is to contact the copyright holder, something that can be difficult to do with a number of books. I think it's fair to assume that a book from Amazon or Apple are legit unless it's obvious something isn't right, such as the publisher listed not being recognize. I generally at least google the publishers that I don't recognize before buying a book.