E-mail: Name:

August 28, 2002

In this issue:
* Announcements:
1. This Was Fun!
2. The End Of The 2003 Doldrums
* Feature Article: E-book Theft: What To Do When It
Happens To You
by Milana Leshinsky
* News From eBay
1. Half Price Features: A Good Deal
2. Ebay UK Offers One Free Featured Listing Day
3. Wanna Buy A Pro Bowler?
4. More On eBay Buying PayPal
5. eBay's Travel Seal
* Yahoo For Yahoo
* Bidville $1 Sale
* Words Of Wisdom From September 11

Announcements:
1. This Was Fun!

I was interviewed by ABC news last week. The topic was weird and crazy auctions, and I actually got a few lines on their website:

http://www.auctionknowhow.com/media/abc.shtml

- - -

2. The End Of The 2003 Doldrums

Yippee! Every year auction traffic falls, and falls, and falls ... and then finally creeps to a relative crawl in late summer. But, from Labor Day on is the best time of the year, and that glorious time is upon us.

So, now is the best time of the year. Don't miss it! Any auctions that you list this week should be scheduled for a post-Labor Day ending date.

Go for it!

Feature Article: E-book Theft: What To Do When It Happens To You
by Milana Leshinsky

I have sold a ton of my ebooks, Putting Information Products On The Auction Block:

Lots of you readers have discovered the joy of selling your own information products on eBay. After all, what could be nicer:

1. No inventory costs!
2. No shipping and handling!

But, as we all know, the net has its share of unscrupulous people. So, what do we do if we find out that someone has stolen our intellectual property? It's happened to me!

One day I received an ezine from one of the biggest marketers on the net (a name many of you know). In this ezine, he wrote rave comments about the article written by one of his aides. Naturally, I was interested in this fabulous article, so I began reading it. It was almost identical to one I had written! In fact, it had entire paragraphs that had been copied from me, word for word. Outrage!

I wrote the editor of the ezine protesting this theft. Response? Nothing. I wrote again. Nothing. Was it worth a lawsuit, and lots of money for a lawyer. Of course not.

So, if this happens to you, the thoughtful article below may help.

“Checking my e-mail one Sunday morning, I immediately
noticed a message. A chill went down my spine. The subject line said, "your e-book has been stolen".

I always knew something like this could happen, but never thought it would happen to me... and so soon! I have only released my e-book a few months ago, and already the "digital pirates" went to work.

E-book theft is the biggest fear authors have, especially if they are working on their very first e- book, their "baby". Most new authors take months writing their e-books, and are worried that as soon as their e-book "hits" the Web, it will be stolen, copied, illegally sold, or even given away.

I. How exactly does an e-book get stolen?

Sharing computer files between friends, family members and colleagues is not a new concept. People have been doing it for decades. But now that they can do it remotely, the number of files shared (e-books and software) has greatly increased.

This is not the authors' main concern, though.

It's the people who get their hands on your e-book and make money reselling it to others in some shape or form. An e-book may be copied, re-written, extracted from, packaged with other e-books, and illegally sold on thieves' web sites.

The worst case, though, is when a thief decides to really make a big chunk of money on your e-book and offers Resale Rights to his customers. This simply means that anybody who buys your e-book from him will also be "allowed" to resell it to others.

Now the Internet is literally flooded with your e-book, and you begin to notice a huge drop in sales AND your income. Every author's worst nightmare.

II. Why would anyone risk getting caught?

While e-books are extremely easy to publish, they are just as easy to steal. "Digital pirates" know it, and take this risk in exchange for making a few bucks (well, actually "my" thief claimed to have made over $10,000 selling my e-books. To this day I don't know if this is accurate, but I am sure it turned out quite profitable for him).

Most people who steal other people's digital products have no respect or appreciation for hard work and talent it takes to produce a quality product. "You put a few words together and now charging $50 for it!", complained the thief in one of his messages to me. (How ironic - I thought it was my place to complain!)

An e-book is mostly prone to theft when 2 things are true:

a) The topic is hot and in demand, so it will be easy to make money selling it.

b) If you sell Master Reprint Rights to your e-book, which makes it difficult to track who resells it legally and who has not paid for the rights to sell it.

III. What steps to take when it happens to you?

If you have just discovered that your e-book is being illegally sold on another web site, stop. Take a deep breath. Has your e-book been really stolen? Go through this list to rule each situation out:

a) You sold Reprint Rights to this person and forgot about it
b) This merchant simply sells a demo version of your e- book
c) This merchant has purchased Reprint Rights from one of your authorized reseller (who holds the Master Rights to your e-book)
d) The e-book has a similar title and content, but is not YOUR e-book.
e) The seller may be not aware that he is infringing on your rights, and is selling your e-book by mistake (this is only the case if you offer Reprint Rights to your e-book)

If you ruled every item on this list, it's time to take action.

1) Find out the name of the person who is reselling your e-book. You can do this by doing a "Whois" search on Network Solutions web site (www.netsol.com). The search will reveal to you the name of the person who registered the domain name for the illegal site, his e-mail address, mailing address, and a phone number. There is no guarantee that this information is 100% accurate, but it's worth a try.

Your perpetrator's web site may also contain his name and e-mail address. Your first step is to send him a polite but firm message. Ask for an explanation, and wait 24 hours for his reply. If you do not get a response, or he refuses to remove your e-book from his web site, move on to the next step.

2) Find out the name of the hosting company, domain name registrar, and the Internet Service Provider (ISP). The hosting company may be listed under Technical Contact when you do the "Whois" search, or under "Domain Servers" at the bottom of the listing. It may look something like this: S181.PAIR.COM. Enter this address into your Internet browser location bar and you will see that this site belongs to www.Pair.com.

The ISP may be located right in the person's e-mail address. For example, if the e-mail is jsmith@earthlink.com, then the ISP is Earthlink.com. If the web address is hosted by a free hosting company (e.g. www.tripod.com/members/~jsmith) then grab the phone number of their customer service or even a fraud department.

Contact as many of these agencies as possible to inform them of the situation. Firmly ask them to suspend their services for this client. Always be calm and polite in your first message.

Charles Petit, an attorney and the webmaster of authorslawyer.com says that "Some ISPs... claim that they will not take any action without seeing the certificate of copyright registration. Don't believe them. This is really just lawyerese for "we won't resolve disputed copyrights." The United States Copyright Law (17 U.S.C. section 512) makes the ISP responsible once notified of the infringement in writing, and is signed "under penalty of perjury." The copyright need not have been registered at all, mentions Mr.Petit. "It is required only for a lawsuit, and late registration only limits the remedies available in court."

Be sure to "immediately print the outgoing message and sign and date the printout", mentions Mr.Petit. Mr. Petit's more-detailed discussion, including sample letters, is at
http://www.authorslawyer.com/c-pir0.shtml

3) Be sure to also contact the payment processor. Most thieves use a third party processor such as PayPal or ClickBank. Contact them immediately asking them to close their client's account.

4) In most cases, by this time your problem will be solved. The hosting company will suspend their services, the payment processor will stop processing payment, or the ISP will stop the thief's Internet Service.

If not, you may need an attorney who handles intellectual property disputes such as an e-book theft. It may take just a letter from him or her to resolve this situation.

You may think, "I will let it go - it's only one person, how much harm can he possibly do?". One illegal reseller is most likely not going to hurt your business. But if you don't take measures to stop more than one thief, you may slowly notice a drop in sales, as the Internet becomes saturated with your product.

Do take basic measures outlined in the steps above. It won't take you more than a couple of hours, but will save your business cash flow in the long run.

IV. How can you prevent e-book theft?

Catching and pursuing your thieves is not easy and time- consuming. Many e-book authors choose to prevent such situations before they even write their e-books. Here are some ways that you can stop theft before it happens.

1) Use an e-book compiler that makes your e-book 100% theft-proof. "E-book Pro" offers you such protection. With it you can remotely cut off access to anyone who stole, illegally redistributes, or otherwise loses their right to your ebook. Developed by the Internet Marketing guru, Cory Rudl, this is the ONLY software on the market that offers such protection for your e-books.

2) Always hide the contents of a directory where your e-book file is located. There is not much you can do if your customer decides to resell your e-book, but for those who are looking for easy-to-steal files, be sure to place "index.html" in that directory. This will insure that your files are invisible to Internet users.

3) Give your e-book a creative file name. I noticed that at least once a day someone tries to "guess" my e-book file name by typing different ones in. Don't name your e-book file close to its title.

4) Password protect your e-books, and change your password at least once a month. This can be easily done through your hosting company control panel, or via a CGI script.

5) Do a search on your e-book title (and your name) at least once a month to see if anyone is selling your e-book without your knowledge. When you start selling Reprint Rights, be sure to save all the names of your resellers. This way you will always know whether this person is authorized to resell your e-book.

IV. How can you take advantage of e-book theft?

Yes, you read it right. Some authors actually take advantage of their e-books being stolen, especially those writers who have been in such situations before.

Here is the thinking behind this concept. If a thief truly wants your e-book, he will find a way to get it. Even if it means typing it up manually!

Instead of doing everything possible to stop the theft, authors take it into consideration BEFORE writing their e-books. Here is how you can do it, too.

1) Promote yourself, other e-books, your services, your newsletter, and your web sites throughout the e-book. If you're giving examples, try to use your own web sites and your own experiences to illustrate.

2) Always have at least one more product for sale as your back-end product. Mention it throughout your e-book and link to it where needed.

3) Be sure to offer an incentive to your readers (whether they come from you or your thieves) to subscribe to join your mailing list. Give away a free report, a free e-book, a free newsletter, a free pen, etc. just to capture their e-mails. You will then be able to send them follow-up messages and special promotions.

4) Create more and more e-books of interest to the same audience. Since they can't get more from the thief, they will get it from you!

5) Put a lot of personality in your e-book. It will make it harder to steal and claim as somebody else's, will make you develop close relationships with your customers, and will make your e-book better.

In my own e-book development, I try to combine all of the above - prevention, pursuing, and promotion. But here is to your e-books never to be stolen! :-)”

Milana is the author of the highly acclaimed “Create Your First Business Website In 10 Days” which does a beautiful job of teaching anyone how to write websites and other goodies, using HTML. She takes a complicated subject and makes it as simple as possible.

http://10days.auctionknowhow.com

News From eBay
1. Half Price Features: A Good Deal

Starting yesterday, eBay is offering a half price special on their Featured Plus! fee. This is the fee that allows your auctions to be listed in the front of your category, and this can be a very valuable purchase. The normal cost for this feature is $19.95, but for three days, it will cost only $9.95.

Time: begins on Tuesday, August 27th at 00:00:01 PT (12:00 AM plus one second) through 23:59:59 PT Thursday, August 29th (11:59 PM plus 59 seconds).

Which auctions are covered: regular auctions, Fixed Price and Real Estate listings

Where: U.S. eBay

One slightly confusing note: the eBay announcement says eBay Motors is excluded from this offer but “During this 3 day sale, Category Featured fees for eBay Motors non-vehicles categories will be $7.50 on the U.S. site (www.ebaymotors.com). The non- vehicles categories include Parts & Accessories, eBay Motors Everything Else, and any subcategories that fall within these categories.”

Am I going to take advantage of this opportunity? You bet'cha.

2. Ebay UK Offers One Free
Featured Listing Day

eBay UK is holding a free listing day on Thursday 29 August for both auction and Buy It Now formats. Items must list in UK pounds and be willing to accept UK pounds in payment (though you may express a preference for US dollars).

Time: between 00:00:001am BST and 11:59:59pm BST on Thursday 29 August

Categories: free for all categories excluding Autos and Real Estate.

To participate: must be willing to ship to the UK and must list on the UK site

http://pages.ebay.co.uk/sell/fldaug.html

3. Wanna Buy A Pro Bowler?

Here is an interesting listing: pro bowler Kim Adler is for sale! Well, not exactly. What she is actually auctioning off is an 8-square-inch block on the side of her shorts or skirt.

As Kim tours the pro bowling circuit, the lucky winner will be sponsored by her and picked up by TV cameras. Kim has won 15 national bowling titles and appeared on media such as ESPN and Sports Illustrated for Women.

Very creative! What can YOU auction in a similar fashion? Wonder if anyone would pay for me to wear their logo to the grocery store and gas station? :-)

http://auction-genius-course.com/listings/service1.shtml

4. More On eBay Buying PayPal

The Department of Justice has given its approval for the buyout of PayPal by eBay.

The buyout can still be stopped by State Attorneys General, or individuals bringing an antitrust lawsuit. The State Attorneys General are the caped crusaders who won out over the tobacco companies and Microsoft, so they might take on eBay. You can find the Attorneys General in your state by a search at google.com. Don't forget to contact your Senators and Congressional Representatives also. The more concern we users display, the more protections might be added to the deal.

Find your State and Federal Representatives:
http://action.citizen.org/pc/dbq/officials/

5. eBay's Travel Seal

Over the past few months, eBay has made trading on eBay Travel even more safe, by ensuring that travel sellers are verified through the Seller Verification by Square Trade program.

The SquareTrade Travel Seal will identify the seller as a Travel Verified Seller, and highlight the special protections for buyers that are built in to the program. The travel seal will be automatically posted on all auctions by verified sellers within certain eBay Travel categories. The seal will not appear on listings within “Luggage” or “Other Travel”, even if the seller is verified.

In addition, eBay and Square Trade are joining to increase the protection coverage for buyers in the affected eBay Travel categories to $500.

Yahoo For Yahoo

Yahoo auctions has a cool tool called Seller's Manager. It “tracks and manages your auctions offline, right from your desktop, and it saves you time by streamlining the process of adding auctions.”

You can:

* Create auction listings in seconds, from your desktop
* Then submit all your listings in one batch
* Monitor your auctions from your desktop
* With one click, you can synchronize the listings in your Seller's Manager with your listings in My Auctions, so your records are always up-to-date
* Record "Notes" to yourself to track your auctions and monitor your to-do list
* Create and submit hundreds of listings, without waiting for web pages to load and wasting expensive connect time
* Use "Templates" to quickly create multiple, similar auctions.

If you want to use this lovely FREE tool, you must download it onto your computer. Wish eBay had something similar.

http://auctions.yahoo.com/phtml/auc/us/promo/ysm.html

Bidville $1 Sale

Auction site bidville.com is holding a $1 sale – with no reserve – September 1-14. Look for some great buys. And, if you want to sell, go to:

http://www.bidville.com/community/messages/default.asp

Might be a great way to test out another auction site, besides the Big Three (or perhaps, the Big One and The Two #2s).

Words Of Wisdom From September 11

Recently Lisa Beamer was on “Good Morning America”. She's the wife of Todd Beamer who said 'Let's Roll!' and helped take down the plane that was heading for Washington D. C. She said it's the little things that she misses most about Todd, such as hearing the garage door open as he came home, and her children running to meet him. She's now the mom of a beautiful little girl, Mary.

Lisa recalled this story: “I had a very special teacher in high school many years ago whose husband died suddenly of a heart attack. About a week after his death, she shared some of her insight with a classroom of students. As the late afternoon sunlight came streaming in through the classroom windows and the class was nearly over, she moved a few things aside on the edge of her desk and sat down there. With a gentle look of reflection on her face, she paused and said, Class is over, I would like to share with all of you, a thought that is unrelated to class, but which I feel is very important.

Each of us is put here on earth to learn, share, love, appreciate and give of ourselves. None of us knows when this fantastic experience will end. It can be taken away at any moment. Perhaps this is the power's way of telling us that we must make the most out of every single day. Her eyes, beginning to water, she went on, "So I would like you all to make me a promise. From now on, on your way to school, or on your way home, find something beautiful to notice. It doesn't have to be something you see, it could be a scent, perhaps of freshly baked bread wafting out of someone's house, or it could be the sound of the breeze slightly rustling the leaves in the trees, or the way the morning light catches one autumn leaf as it falls gently to the ground. Please look for these things, and cherish them. For, although it may sound trite to some, these things are the "stuff" of life. The little things we are put here on earth to enjoy. The things we often take for granted. We must make it important to notice them, for at anytime it can all be taken away.

The class was completely quiet. We all picked up our books and filed out of the room silently. That afternoon, I noticed more things on my way home from school than I had that whole semester. Every once in a while, I think of that teacher and remember what an impression she made on all of us, and I try to appreciate all of those things that sometimes we all overlook.

Take notice of something special you see on your lunch hour today. Go barefoot. Or walk on the beach at sunset. Stop off on the way home tonight to get a double dip ice cream cone. For as we get older, it is not the things we did that we often regret, but the things we didn't do.

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."