Ebooks Tree

Ebooks Tree is a for-profit, professional company. 
It showed up on fannish radar mid-April 2015 when some fans realized that their fanfiction was included and that there was a fee being charged to access it.
Tumblr and other means of fannish communication lit up in confusion and anger. 
More investigation revealed that the fiction itself wasn't being hosted in any way; instead, the website was providing direct links to the downloadable versions of the stories at the archives where they were stored; the company was phishing and more interested in obtaining credit card information. While a smaller free link led to the download file stored at the respective archive, the larger more prominent link fed the user to a site that requested a credit card in order to view the file. It was unclear whether the fan fiction files could be accessed once a credit card was given, but at least one fan noted that her credit card had been charged.Morgan Dawn's personal notes as seen on a tumblr post; notes accessed April 20, 2015.
While the AO3 seemed to be the main archive that was impacted, other archives were targeted, including the Starsky & Hutch and My Little Pony fiction archives that - like AO3 - offered ePub and PDF downloads. In the early days some fans claimed that stories were also pulled from archives such as FF.net and Wattpad; however, since neither site offers easy downloads of PDFs, ePub or Mobi files, this may have been an overstatement. In fact, the way ebooks-Tree was set up, any search for any author's name would create a "fake" download link to a non-existent PDF file that required a credit card to download. This caused confusion for some FF.net fans who kept searching - and finding - their names but could not access the files to verify. 
Ebooks Tree did not focus solely on fan fiction - they appeared to pull from commercial fiction websites,; including foreign language sites. . 
In fact, as one fan obserevd: 
Many fans filled out DMCA notices modeling them along helpful instructions provided by the fyeahcopyright and the OTW who responded quickly upon discovering that their files has been hotlinked. Others began locking their AO3 stories so that only registered users could access their fanworks (as suggested by the OTW). Others stopped posting chapters for a while. Only a few removed their fanfic from AO3 entirely.. See also As one fan explained: "I'm not going to pull my work from AO3. It isn't their fault some scam artist managed to scrape some of my pieces from their site. IMO, AO3 is still the best multi-fandom archive." 
Most fans were pleased with the quick and protective response by the OTW. Shortly after a flood of fan driven DMCA notices began arriving at eBooks Tree, the site changed its domain name (to eBooks-Tree.net), removed most of the AO3 fan fiction (even without the authors submitting DMCA notices) and disabled the search feature making it more difficult for authors to find and locate if their files were being used. As of April 20, 2015, the site was still operational and only a few non-AO3 fan stories remained. However, a week later, professional author Diane Duane did a manual search and discovered that four of her published books had reappeared with new and different download links. 
In the end, as one fan wrily noted:
The site (both .net and .com) went offline around April 25, 2015.
==Topics Discussed==
* fandom and profit
* not being asked for permission
* fandom and visibility
* fair use
==Fans Explain It To Other Fans==
From Organization for Transformative Works: 
Another fan posted:
One fan posted a series of screencaps to help fans navigate the site safely and to understand what links led to the credit card phishing sites and what links led directly to the safer AO3 download URLs. Click to see larger versions.
File:Tumblr nms8ie9nND1rd2woro1 1280.png|"Image 1: If ebooks-Tree has links to your fanfic on AO3, this is the screen you will see. The number of stories is in the upper left corner."
File:Tumblr nms8ie9nND1rd2woro2 1280.png|"Image 2: If ebooks-Tree does not have links to your fanfic on AO3, there will be no stories listed. There will be a fake download link in the center that will take you to a pay website that will ask you for your credit card to download your fiction .... I do not know if you can download stories from this “fake” website link."
File:Tumblr nms8ie9nND1rd2woro3 1280.png|"Image 3: If the story is on ebooks-Tree you will find an individual page (This story is “A Visit From the Home Office” by esteefee). There are two links: the center link is to the pay website that will ask for a credit card to download your fic. The smaller link to the far left is a direct link to the story on A03. The mobi file in this second link is still stored on A03."
File:Tumblr nms8ie9nND1rd2woro4 1280.png|"Image 4: The last page is what happens if you click on the “free” link to the left to the mobi file stored on A03. As of 4/13/2015, AO3 has disabled the direct links and this is the page the reader will see. They will not be able to download the A03 file. They will not be able to go to your AO3 page. However, the “fake” link remains - I do not know if you can still access the story from there as it requires a credit card to test. edited: as of 4/14/2014, ebooks-Tree has found a way to bypass the AO3 block. "
The fyeahcopyright blog also posted instructions on how to submit a DMCA notice.
==Fan Reaction: 2015==
===April 13===
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
===April 14===
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
===April 15===
===April 16===
===April 17===
===April 18===
===April 19===
===April 20===
==Gallery of Comments==
Additional screencaps of tumblr discussions can be found here,here, here, here,here, and here, 
Screencaps were taken over a period of days from April 14, 2015 to April 20, 2015 of entries bearing the "ebooks-trees" tag.
==Further Reading==
 
*
* Podfic and Last.fm (October 2010)
 
* AO3 App Wars (2020)
* AO3 & AI Generated Content (topic: scraping of AO3 for training AIs) (May 2023)
* Lore.fm (a text-to-speech app that advertised itself as "Audible for AO3" and was designed for use by fans to listen to audio versions of fanfiction) (May 2024)
==References==
Category:Fandom Occurrences
Category:Websites
Category:2015 Websites