How Three Germans Are Cloning the Web
Bamarang is the creation of Oliver, Marc, and Alexander Samwer, a trio of German brothers who have a wildly successful business model: Find a promising Internet business, in the U.S., and clone it internationally. Since starting their first dot-clone in 1999, a German version of EBay, they’ve duplicated Airbnb, eHarmony, Pinterest, and other high-profile businesses. In total, they’ve launched more than 100 companies. Their Zappos clone, Zalando, now dominates six European markets and is estimated to be worth $1 billion by Financial Times Deutschland. Through their venture capital firm, the European Founders Fund, they also invested in European knockoffs of Facebook and YouTube, which sold for $112 million and $36 million, respectively.
Boldfaced emphasis added by me.
Do they have a book business too?
And if they do, is it filled with unlicensed translations of popular American, British, French, Swedish, and other books? And especially ones that have been self-published? How hard would it be to rip off the Top 100 of each Amazon category?
That day is coming: Writers: It’s The INVISIBLE Piracy That Will Kill You. And that Businessweek article has put that day even closer.
It’s already here just in the English language alone:
So an RWA member, the treasurer of the Kiss of Death RWA chapter no less, is found to be plagiarizing. Name is Kristal Singletary aka Kay Manning | K.S. Manning | Payton Bradshaw. The first signs were revealed by a fan of Liz Fielding who reported to her that “La Maison Romance” by Kay Manning, a free download on Smashwords, appeared to be a copy of Liz Fielding’s story “The Cinderella Fantasy”.
How much easier it will be to get away with in another language!
I think what you’ve described has already been here for a long time, but like you say, it’s just invisible to many authors because of the language barrier.