An author under the name Serdar Kan has been ripping off Wattpad stories and reselling them on Amazon's Kindle store.
On the 17th, author Amylilleigh posted on Twitter that she had discovered dozens of Wattpad books by different authors for sale on Amazon's Kindle store. They were all posted by the same author: Serdar Kan.
We were able to find over 30 books listed under the author's name, all of which seemed to come from Wattpad.
After complaints from some of the books' authors, Amazon removed all content from Serdar Kan from its store. Serdar Kan continues to be listed on Goodreads as the author of many of the Wattpad books they ripped off.
What Was Stolen?
The Serdar Kan profile copied many high-profile books, most of which had a few million reads. They copied mostly genre romances, including mafia books like Luciano and Saved by a Gang Leader, and paranormal stories His Mortal Bride and Wolf Moon. They even stole an instructional book called Tips & Tricks to Writing on Wattpad.
The poster copied the original covers as well, strategically cropping out the authors' names wherever they could. When the author's name was in the middle of a cover, they covered it with their own yellow title bar. We were also able to find a few books where they forgot to remove the author's name at all, so you can still read the names of several original authors.
How Long Has This Been Going On?
Since Amazon has removed the original book postings, it's hard to know for certain how long the books had been available for sale. Almost all of the corresponding Goodreads listings were labeled as published in May of 2019, and based on the use of older, out-of-date covers, we're assuming that they were at least around for a year, likely closer to a year and a half or two years.
Wattpad has long been criticized for its inability to protect user content from piracy and misuse. Amazon has had its own slew of plagiarism issues, and many have accused the platform of being irresponsible in its failure to address what many see as easily solvable problems.
While this should be a warning to both platforms, who until now have shown little interest in addressing plagiarism complaints, we expect that it's too small of a scandal to have any effect on their policies moving forward.
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