Takelot.com Selling My Books Without My Permission

I wrote and illustrated three children’s books and published them on Amazon. One was about a Tiny Fish, another was about Four Promises, and the last was about a Trip to DC. All of them were inspired by my two grandsons. Every once in a while I google the books to see what is what. I have found outlets selling my books without my consent - and have notified Amazon on several occasions by reporting copyright infringement. Sometimes the situation is resolved; sometimes it is not. I have also found a lot of my digital art being sold without permission and have contacted the specific websites. That usually goes nowhere. Last week I found all three of my books being sold on a site called Takealot.com. I sent them an email stating that I had not given them permission to sell my books and to take them down. They actually responded - and the end result was that two of the items were removed. The third item still remains. So I contacted them again with a photo of the book on their website again requesting that it be removed. So now I am waiting to hear. It’s not that I have made any money on any of these books. It’s just the principle of the thing. It took a lot of effort to go through the exercise of not only writing but also illustrating these books. It just doesn’t seem right that someone could collect a dime off of any sale!

On the Internet - Scientific Articles, Digitalart, and Children’s Books

Every once in a while I google my name to see what comes up. I post a lot of stuff on line related to my digitalart and have several websites that I update on a daily basis. It’s like having a full time job. So it was interesting to find something called “Art Ranked Discovery Engine” specific to springer spaniel paintings. There are thousands of images out there and I was pleased to see one of mine in the top 38. There was another site called “Alibris” that highlighted the best selling Betta books. Among the 12 or so that were shown was my children’s book called “A Tiny Fish Tale” that I wrote and illustrated several years ago about my Betta fish named George Washington. It was first published through StoryChimes and was available on ITunes. Then I self published the story on Amazon. What was even more interesting were the scientific contributions that were identified. These included my real clinical nursing and management articles about the first bedside automated documentation system using touch screens in 1991, my masters thesis abstract from Marquette University about peripheral vascular disease, and an article about venous stasis ulcers that I wrote as a head nurse so many years ago! I wrote another article about using multiple lines for hemodynamic monitoring in the ICU, but that didn’t make the list. When I look at all this it reminds me that I’ve had a very diverse interest in several things, but knew I needed to make a living when I selected my major in college. Luckily I’ve been able to enjoy nursing, journalism, and art throughout my careers and now in to retirement. I always liked to draw even as a youngster, but my practical side pushed me to major in nursing. Good things have come from each phase and I am very proud of all of them.