"Why on Earth Is Someone Stealing Unpublished Book Manuscripts?"

[Hopscotch]

From New York Times:  “A phishing scam with unclear motive or payoff is targeting authors, agents and editors big and small, baffling the publishing industry….countless targets in a mysterious international phishing scam that has been tricking writers, editors, agents and anyone in their orbit into sharing unpublished book manuscripts. It isn’t clear who the thief or thieves are, or even how they might profit from the scheme. High-profile authors like Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan have been targeted, along with celebrities like Ethan Hawke. But short story collections and works by little-known debut writers have been attacked as well, even though they would have no obvious value on the black market.  In fact, the manuscripts do not appear to wind up on the black market at all, or anywhere on the dark web, and no ransoms have been demanded. When copies of the manuscripts get out, they just seem to vanish. So why is this happening?...”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/books/publishing-manuscripts-phishing-scam.html

[TimothyEllis]

I saw that on Facebook.

My reaction : KU scamming.

Unpublished works are just the thing to stuff a book up to the KU maximum pages with. Won't set off the plagiarism detectors.

Once the book is published, they just remove that one from the KU scam, or remove the whole scam book and just do another one to replace it.

Inside a big book, the stolen work is pretty much hidden. At least until the original is published. And even then, the original is likely to be dinged first by Amazon, since it was second to be published.

[Hopscotch]

Tim - There ought to be a book in that (no pun intended)

[CoraBuhlert]

Though if you just want unpublished manuscripts to stuff KU books, simply setting up shop as a fake agent or publisher and using the submissions you get would be easier than stealing manuscripts by high profile author. If a manuscript by Margaret Atwood is stolen, it will be noticed. And if Amazon's plagiarism detector pings it, it's not the Margaret Atwood novel that will be taken down.

[TimothyEllis]

Though if you just want unpublished manuscripts to stuff KU books, simply setting up shop as a fake agent or publisher and using the submissions you get would be easier than stealing manuscripts by high profile author. If a manuscript by Margaret Atwood is stolen, it will be noticed. And if Amazon's plagiarism detector pings it, it's not the Margaret Atwood novel that will be taken down.

True, but by then, they've made their money and moved on to another one. The time between stealing, and being discovered, is enough to make a killing on the scam book.

[Hopscotch]

Book thief who stole more than 1,000 manuscripts ‘wanted to cherish them before anyone else’
The Guardian   13 Mar 2023

“The former publishing employee who stole manuscripts of books by Margaret Atwood, Sally Rooney and Ian McEwan has said he had a ‘burning desire’ to feel like he was a publishing professional, and had no intention of leaking the books he stole….[he] ‘wanted to keep them closely to my chest and be one of the fewest to cherish them before anyone else, before they ended up in bookshops....One day, I created a spoof email address for someone I knew of in the publishing industry, and I sent an email to someone else that I knew of asking for a pre-publication manuscript…When that request was successful, from that moment on, this behaviour became an obsession, a compulsive behaviour’....[Filippo] Bernardini will be sentenced [in New York] on 5 April.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/mar/13/book-manuscripts-thief-margaret-atwood-sally-rooney-ian-mcewan