I am the owner of a home-based book trading business that has been in operation since about 2006. Disabled since childhood by chronic health problems, I moved from New Jersey to New Mexico in the hope its climate might improve my condition and with the aid of a small inheritance and carefully cultivated credit started a business in the book trade. As a buyer for several textbook wholesale companies, I seek used and new books from after-market sources such as college professors' sample desk copies, store overstocks and liquidations, on-line marketplaces, other traders, and students selling their books on-line. Textbooks are a commodity with seasonal highs and lows in value. Though this has never been a very profitable business with margins typically ranging from 10-20%, it's something that fit within the limits of my health, lifted me out of the slow death spiral of SSI, and afforded me a home in a small rental cottage here in the desert.
Unfortunately, things began running into trouble in 2013 with the emergence of a peculiar counterfeit book scare and the simultaneous appearance of the Washington DC law firm Oppenheim + Zebrak. Fake books have always been a problem in the book trade, but a minor one as the production of truly convincing counterfeit books was extremely difficult. It required the use of the exact same printing equipment, materials, and production volume as used by the publishers themselves, an investment no illegitimate operation could likely afford. Most such fakes have been produced for local, foreign, markets that don't really care about book quality, though in recent years, overseas businesses selling by direct drop-shipping to students who likewise care less about quality than the escalating book prices have increased their flow into the US. Spotting even the best fake books has always been relatively easy for traders and wholesalers simply by comparing books side-by-side. Differences in printing and materials are thus obvious. However, a couple years ago a wave of allegedly counterfeit books began appearing on the market that were so high in quality the only people who could reliably identify them were the book publishers themselves, after an evaluation process that often took months. These books were so numerous in volume and diversity of titles that it constituted what may be the single largest wave of book counterfeiting in the history of publishing--something that should have caught the attention of the media but never did.
Given that these books were supposedly virtually indistinguishable, how would anyone know they existed or how to look out for them? After all, the publishers themselves don't make all the books in the same place on the same equipment or even in the same country. There's always some small variation from one print run to the next. Well, apparently the publishers themselves discovered these and started providing certain wholesale companies with monthly watch lists of book titles they somehow anticipated might turn up as suspect. For many decades, the publishers and wholesalers had a simple policy for handling fake books when found. They would simply have their covers or copyright info pages torn off and mailed in to the publishers as proof of destruction. As long as this wasn't too regular an occurrence, this was sufficient. However, suddenly certain publishers changed this policy, demanding all books from these lists be sent to them for evaluation. Then Oppenheim + Zebrak would begin harassing anyone they could in any way trace back to having contact with them. The disruption caused by O+Z in the book market was dramatic. Many small businesses disappeared, one wholesaler stopper its book scout program altogether, and the trade of books in general was severely suppressed, which drove market prices higher.
In 2014 I chanced to purchase several dozen books from a trader right in my neighboring state of Colorado that, when I sent them to one of my wholesalers, were apparently on one of these watch lists and forwarded to the publishers for evaluation, the wholesaler only telling me to stop sending those particular books. I received no notice of any kind from the publishers themselves stating these books were counterfeit or that there was any problem with the company selling them. A month later O+Z, claiming to represent the publishers Cengage, McGraw-Hill, and Pearson, appeared out of nowhere demanding I turn over all remaining books of those titles and copies of all my invoices to them. After this, they began making wild accusations, dire threats, and demanded hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlement, which was, of course, completely impossible. I never actually sold these books. All sales to wholesalers are conditional upon evaluation and I was never paid for them. Other companies simply returned them without payment or explanation. I had no reason to believe these books might be suspicious. The trader I bought them from had a well-established history. I compared the books to sample copies I bought elsewhere. Since this was a new source, I sent my wholesaler samples of some books for pre-evaluation. I even contacted the publishers themselves when I noticed some books seemed to have a new kind of binding and wanted to confirm they were, in fact using that. None of this mattered to O+Z. They argued that some legal theory they called 'indirect infringement' made me liable for copyright infringement no matter how I might have come in contact with a suspicious book, and any book was suspicious if they said it was. If that argument is legitimate it means that every student who now buys a textbook used or on-line is in exactly the same legal jeopardy I'm in.
Spending what little savings I had, I hired a local business attorney to try to communicate with these people but they only mocked and insulted him. Eventually I could afford no more formal communication. Some months later, they contacted me again, claiming new 'evidence' of my infringing activity (but providing no description or proof) and demanding a smaller, yet still impossible, settlement amount. There was still nothing I could do. Finally, I received a summons from them upon their filing suit in federal court far away in Massachusetts--a state with no relation to anything in this case and seemingly chosen to exploit the fact that I am disabled and would not be able to appear there myself. Apparently they decided that their 'indirect infringement' argument wasn't quite sufficient so they fabricated an elaborate narrative like something from a James Bond film, accusing me of masterminding some vast counterfeit book operation that even involved a 'textbook laundering front masquerading as a fish packing plant.' None of this was ever mentioned in previous correspondence and the tale was so outrageous it actually caught the attention of two major publishing industry journals who reported on the case. Mr. Oppenheim himself called me to make his final demands, again wanting hundreds of thousands of dollars and insisting that I had to be able to pay as I had been in business for 'decades' and must be very wealthy--though he refused to explain how he arrived at these erroneous conclusions. (as if the photos on my Facebook page alone don't illustrate my lifestyle well enough--I literally live alone in the desert in a tiny adobe cottage) This was not the first time these people seemed to not quite know, or care, who they were talking to...
Exactly why these people have targeted me remains unclear as, unless they are unimaginably incompetent, it should have been obvious to them from the start that I had no money for them to take. I could never be made some kind of example of as the only people in the book industry who know anything about me are a handful of staff in a few wholesale companies to whom I'm disposable. In addition, they seem willing to risk great damage to their own clients' reputations by attacking a book scout (whose job is to be a friend to as many college professors as possible--the people who pick which books to buy...) and a disabled person trying to get by with a home business. (A classic David vs. Goliath scenario that the many news outlets I've contacted may eagerly exploit once this case comes to some conclusion) I suspect their motive may be to test the viability of this indirect infringement argument in preparation for a wholesale attack on the on-line textbook market and the many college students now seeking to save money buying from places like Amazon--which has made no effort to address this threat to their customers. Alternatively, maybe they're just scamming billable hours from their own clients. They seem to have been given an unprecedented degree of independence given the companies they're working for--but perhaps all these publishers are after is the maximum amount of rampant destruction in the market no matter the cost.
With no other options left to me, I have started this campaign, as well as one on GoFundMe, to raise funds for a defense. I have been told by my former attorney will cost at least $80,000. I have no idea what the status of this case is now. The court in Massachusetts has not attempted to communicate with me. Months have gone by without a word from anyone. I have been unable to get any practical advice from any attorney in New Mexico without money up-front. I sit here alone, my health eroding from constant stress, waiting for the guillotine to drop. This business was the only sustainable way to earn a living I could find after 20 years on SSI and if I lose it, I will likely be made immediately homeless, as my savings has been destroyed. Given the odds of reaching the goal for this campaign, I am pledging all donations not used for my defense to the non-profit ISKME (Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education) and their OER Commons program for the development of open source educational resources. Only by returning the responsibility for producing and publishing educational material to the academic community can the rampant and growing abuses of the commercial textbook publishing industry be held in check.
These people must be stopped. They have hurt or destroyed hundreds of small businesses like mine and continue to wreak havoc in the book market. They are a threat to college students and a problem for all those publishers legitimately trying to stem the flow of fake books. The wholesale companies have now figured out that this counterfeit book scare is dubious at best. They have stopped automatically handing over suspect books from these watch lists to these publishers because no one is ever exonerated after their 'evaluations', and that's statistically impossible. They've realized that the volume of supposedly fake books and their diversity of titles is statistically impossible. This wave of 'perfect' counterfeits can't exist without some vast industrial-scale operation that would be impossible to conceal. Therefore, no longer willing to deal with the disruption O+Z is causing, suspect books now are returned by wholesalers and sent back up the supply chain where they are dispersed in direct sales. If any of these are truly counterfeits, O+Z and their clients may be indirectly responsible for putting these books into student’s hands. That is a scandal and an outrage. Let's stop this madness and keep these people from hurting any more businesses like mine or the many students struggling to get an education in spite of a higher education industry now running amok.
