Fa Bd Comics books on SCAMazon: don't buy them
Achievement unlocked: we found with the Pepper&Carrot community Fa BD Comic, the publisher of the worst derivations of Pepper&Carrot made so far.
Unfortunately, the product's are published under my name and also in the name of artists who sent fan-arts of Pepper&Carrot... That's why I write this article to describe a bit this scam and desktop publishing carnage happening right now on Amazon and inform the audience of Pepper&Carrot to not buy them.
Brace yourself, cause we are going in the territory of the zero absolute of quality, graphic designs horrors, colorimetry nightmares and bad layout.
The three books:
A big thanks to Craig Maloney who bought the three books so we could evaluate their quality. He also made all the photos you'll find here and wrote reviews on Amazon under the books to warn other potential customers about the poor quality.
1. Heritage
Link on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Heritage-David-Revoy/dp/B0BS1ZHM9T/
Description: This is a December 2022 paper print of my webcomic single episode "L'heritage en couleur" published in May 2012 and under the license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.
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Caption:
(1): while the cover is ok, the print totally ruins the story itself: the concept of the comic is a representation with colors of the feeling of the main character, and the publisher decided to print the full story in black and white. It makes the full story unreadable and meaningless. Try to read the original and then make yourself an opinion about what the comic worth in black and white. Apparantly, it's good enough for publishing like that for FA Bd Comics publishing...
(2): The attribution is here but the publisher "FA BD comics" don't write their role. And wait, a Caramail email adress? I thought they disapeared 20 years ago. I dislike the way my credit and name on the cover and product page looks as if I endorsed and collaborated into this publishing. It's not a explicit 'endorsement infringement', but I feel ashame to get my name on this.
(3): The publisher forgot a page in the story : one before the final, that totally breaks even more the story. And to fill the end of the book, random part downloaded from the making of are dumped like that without any warning just after the end of the story.
2. Pepper & Carrot Novels
Link on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Pepper-Carrot-Novels-David-Revoy/dp/B09ZZVJLDT/
Description: This is a May 2022 paper print compilation of a mix of Pepper&Carrot Fan-art containing speech-bubbles and Comic Fan-art of Pepper&Carrot.
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Caption:
(1): My name is on the top of the cover, and no artworks of me are on this book. This is very problematic, because even if I really appreciate the study fan-art of Pepper sent by Coyau in 2015 because it was among the first fan-art I receive on Pepper&Carrot, I don't think Coyau expected to get it used as a cover artwork.
(2): Even if all the fan-art are correctly attributed to their author the publisher misread an important information on Pepper&Carrot: the author of the fan-art can license their artwork with the license they want. And without mentioning it, they are all copyrighted. It's written clearly on the "License" box on each fan-art on the website. "This picture is fan-art made by \<author's name>. It is reposted on the fan-art gallery of Pepper&Carrot with permission. Do not reuse this picture for your project unless you obtain author's permissions". The publisher on the credit of their book assume "based on the same character with the same license". It's false and abusive. Also, notice that the email of the publisher changes on this credits, and the 'work of fiction line' from Heritage is here too... Speedy careless copypasta workflow detected.
(3): The fan-art are printed in black and white. You won't get a label to know who within the list of authors drew what page, and there is no layout. The artwork is just pasted on the page with big empty space even when the font is too small. Note how the contrast is also poor. Well, it isn't respectful of the artworks at all.
3. Pepper & Carrot Mini
Link on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Pepper-Carrot-Mini-Nicolas-Artance/dp/B0BHMPMM14/
Description: This is a October 2010 publishing on paper of the Pepper&Carrot Mini comic serie by Nicolas Artance. Nicolas Artance is a core contributor and moderator on Pepper&Carrot community, and really plays a big role on the French version of the main series. He publish his series under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International and also share the full sources (link).
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Caption:
(1): The cover is not from Pepper&Carrot Mini, it wasn't made by Nicolas Artance or by my art, but it is a fan-art by Tessou. So a copyright problem here since the art by Tessou is not published under the license of Pepper&Carrot. The cover also contains three names, and it is hard to know who does what or who endorses what. On Amazon product, we are co-author with Nicolas... What a mess.
(2): Same lie as the previous book about the license of the fan-art, and a big typo to the name of Nicolas (Nocolas). Apparently this publisher has zero proofreader, and just don't care.
(3): The quality, the layout... Everything is printed into black and white and low contrast. The comic strips also in landscape are "adapted to width" to the page. Some fonts are barely readable.
What's next?
First, you can help: if you have an Amazon account you can just click on the "Helpful" button on the reviews of Craig on each book 1, 2 and 3. It's not much, but it will probably helps possible buyer to pass their way to see the 1 star review with a high ranking.
I clearly don't have the charity to think this publisher is just suffering of gross incompetences and just try to help printing Free/Libre cultural work. They never contacted me, they never contributed to any of the Pepper&Carrot ecosystem as far as I know, and they just made the lowest quality product with low effort on a market place with now control on quality.
It's overpriced and watching this level of disrespect for my art and for the book industry is clearly what affects my mood. I don't think this derivation is helping at all. Please FA Bd Comic or Amazon: if you read this, just remove the products as soon as possible.
On my side, I'll try to contact both of them to remove the books. They all contains too much problems to be online, including copyright issues. I'll write any later update I have under here. Waiting for that, please do not buy those books!
😤
Updates
- A. 2023-03-28, 01:20am: I took the time to make an official report for copyright infringement on Amazon. I'll inform you where this report will lead.
- B. 2023-03-28, 01:00pm: I got my answer: "We have been unable to verify that you are the rights owner or their agent." (full automatic letter). Ok, I give up on this...
License additional info: The text of this article is released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. However, images of this article are protected: do not reuse them: they contain fan-art, copyrights and trademarks.
