Author Watch · by Bikoosh

Someone can publish a book under your name today. Would you notice?

Amazon's KDP verifies who uploads a book — not whose name goes on the cover. Since 2023, AI-written knockoffs, sham "biographies" timed to real launches, and cloned covers sold as notebooks have become an industry. Author Watch checks the marketplaces for you, every day, and alerts you only when something new appears.

Free scan: amazon.com + amazon.co.uk + Goodreads · no account · private report

The five patterns it catches

1. Exact-name listings that aren't yours — books published under your name to skim your search traffic.
2. Near-name hybrids — "Coleen" for Colleen, your first name with another author's surname — invisible to your own vanity search.
3. Pre-release parasites — "biographies" and "summaries" timed to your launch window.
4. Copied descriptions — your blurbs and text, lightly paraphrased under an invented name.
5. Cover clones — your cover, sometimes mirrored or recolored, on a $4.99 notebook.

This is documented, not hypothetical

In August 2023, novelist and industry analyst Jane Friedman found a batch of AI-generated books for sale under her exact name — and Amazon initially declined to remove them because her name wasn't trademarked (her account · The Guardian). Journalists including Kara Swisher found shelves of AI-written "biographies" of themselves ahead of their launches. The Authors Guild has tracked the pattern across its membership ever since. Platform verification tightened — but it checks uploaders, not bylines, so detection is still the author's job.

How it works

1. Confirm your catalog. We assemble your real works from open book databases; you tick what's yours. That's the ground truth.
2. Daily sweeps. Seven Amazon marketplaces (US, UK, DE, FR, ES, IT, CA) + Goodreads, compared against your catalog: name variants, cover similarity (survives mirroring and crops), text overlap, launch-timing, commodity markers.
3. Alerts only on news. A new finding = one email with the evidence snapshot and a pre-filled takedown kit (Amazon report, KDP violation, Goodreads librarian request). No findings = no email.

Findings are similarity signals for you to confirm — never verdicts about a listing or its publisher. Weekly aggregate numbers are public in the Fake Book Index.

Pricing

Checkout via Gumroad; your license key activates at /author-watch/activate in under a minute. Cancel anytime. Not sure yet? The free scan shows you what's out there today.

Answers to the questions authors actually search

• Someone is selling AI-generated books with my name on them

  Why AI slop books target real author names, how to confirm what you're looking at, the reporting sequence that works, and why this is a recu

• Amazon asked for a trademark registration number — I'm an author, now what?

  Why the trademark field appears, how to proceed without one, when registering your author name as a trademark actually makes sense, and the

• Author impersonation monitoring — what it is and how it works

  Continuous monitoring for misuse of an author's name, covers, and text across Amazon and Goodreads — the five patterns it watches, the signa

• My book cover was copied and sold as a notebook on Amazon

  The cover-clone/notebook pattern — why it exists, why this one IS a copyright case, how to file an effective DMCA-style report on the cover

• Does KDP identity verification stop author impersonation?

  What Amazon's KDP identity checks actually verify, why pen names make byline verification impossible by design, and what actually protects a

• A fake biography of me appeared on Amazon before my book launch

  The pre-release parasite pattern — why sham biographies and summaries cluster around announced launch dates, how to clear them before launch

• Fake books under my name on Amazon — what to do

  The exact sequence — document first, report through Amazon's own channels, escalate via the Authors Guild if you're a member, and monitor so

• How to find every book listed under your name on Amazon

  The manual method done properly — exact-name search syntax, all seven marketplaces, author-page audit, Goodreads cross-check — and where the

• How to remove a fake book from Goodreads

  Goodreads librarians, not a report button, control book records — how to request a split or correction, what evidence to include, and how to

• How to report author impersonation to Amazon without a trademark

  You don't need a registered trademark to report a book falsely sold under your name — the framing that works, the forms to use, and the esca

This is an informational tool, not legal advice. Findings are similarity signals that require human confirmation — they are not accusations about any listing, publisher, or person. · Weekly aggregate data: Fake Book Index