Elite Fitness had been mailed a second letter about copyright infringement…
If you’ve been keeping up, you already know that EliteFitness has received a letter from the lawyers representing the owner of steroid.com (Brian) informing them that their book “Anabolic Game Plan” violates copyright law because it copies (verbatim) from my first book. Well, they haven’t responded, and today were sent a second letter from my lawyer, asking for 50% of all revenue from AGP, plus it’s removal from sale until the copyright violation is fixed. Additionally, my e-books are to stop being sold on EF as well, and my contract terminated.
When they first came out with AGP, they sent me an advance copy to look at, at which point I informed them that it directly copied portions of my book. I pointed out 2 such paragraphs (which they admitted violated copyright, and removed) and told them that there were more, and that they needed to find them and remove them also. They asked me to do that for them..which is kind of a stupid request. It’s not my job to keep other authors from infringing on copyright when they produce books which compete with my own.
Anyway, EF thought I wouldn’t check up on them (wrong!), and I suppose they also thought I wouldn’t get a lawyer (wrong!), or maybe that Brian wouldn’t back my play (wrong!)….but now they’re in a pretty bad situation, and the fact that they infringed on my copyright is very clear, and frankly, it’s a situation where EF just can’t win.
I’ll keep you updated as the situation develops. More likely than not, they’ll ignore this warning from my lawyer, and by sometime next week both myself and Brian will be filing complaints and pursuing a lawsuit.
If I wanted to get really nasty, I would send letters to the other two (2!) published authors who own copyright on some other stuff which is also copied (verbatim) by AGP. Yes, that’s right…in the frenzy of copy/pasting off the internet that this book was written by doing, I found several other already published (and copywritten) parts in AGP, written by authors other than myself.