After a recent escalation of the tensions between myPadMedia and Gear Diary, Judie bought access to find out what the real story is behind this company.
We will have a full report later today, but here’s the biggest bombshell:
MyPadMedia is selling you access to the free eBook site Feedbooks.
Yes, you read that right! But you can access myPadMedia’s “catalog” of ebooks for free, and without paying their ridiculous $49.95 fee, by heading to Feedbooks.com, a wonderful free website of self-published and public domain works.
Even better? Feedbooks didn’t authorize this! This morning we had a very enlightening email exchange with them:
Dear Hadrien-
My name is Carly, I am an editor at Geardiary.com. We recently came across a website called “MyPadMedia.com” that offered unlimited ebook downloads for only $50, including bestsellers. We made the assumption it was some sort of pirated books scam, but MyPadMedia was very insistent they were legitimate. Finally, our editor in chief purchased a subscription to find out the truth.
As it turns out, they are charging people $50 for access to FeedBooks.com. As you can see from the attached screenshot, it’s just your site with a MyPadMedia banner across the top.
Were you aware this site was charging a gateway fee for access to Feedbooks? We want to confirm that this was an unauthorized use of the site, and not anything that you are endorsing.
Sincerely,
Carly
Feedbooks responded almost immediately:
Dear Carly,
We were not aware and received several strange e-mails from people asking for “refunds” lately. This is obviously an unauthorized usage of our website and we’ll take the right legal and technical actions asap.
Thank you for this information,
Hadrien
Stay tuned for more information as the myPadMedia debacle continues. Judie and I have quite a bit more to say, but we wanted to get this Feedbooks news up right away.
And please show FeedBooks some link love and head to their site directly; it is a fabulous source of FREE eBooks!
You did an excellent job revealing this scam. Feedbooks provides products for free, but that doesn’t mean it’s free to exploit for profit.
That aside, I think the “comics” category of Feedbooks itself is rather deceptive in nature. I downloaded “Batman #25.” There’s no artwork and it’s fan fiction.
Feedbooks should clearly categorize it as fan-fiction and as a short story rather than having artwork up front making it look like it’s a comic book.
Here’s the link for reference:
http://www.feedbooks.com/userbook/11641
Now, obviously I know this isn’t really DC’s official Batman #25, since the DC series hit issue #25 many years before 2007, but Feedbooks doesn’t go out of their way to point any of this out.
Feedbooks clearly isn’t as low on the food chain as myPadMedia, but they aren’t exactly being forthright about what they’re offering even if their price is right.
I was thinking the same thing, but at least they have a lot of public domain books and others. I do agree they should mark fan fiction as fan fiction.
Hats off to Carly and Judie for shedding light on unsavory practices. Bravo!
Err, Carly, there’s another one..
http://www.padbro.com
Site is very similar to that of MyPadMedia.
Care to warn your readers about this one too?
@Neil – Looks suspiciously similar, albeit $3 less. 😛
I love how both padbro.com and myPadMedia both fee the need to protect *everything* about their website registrations. You’d think they were hiding something. :eyeroll:
Avoid MyPadMedia.com: http://www.geardiary.com/2010/06/02/mypadmedias-secret-exposed/. Selling Freebooks.com content illegally.
Same scam is now at http://www.thenovelnetwork.com/ Thanks for exposing these losers! If it sounds too good to be true it usually is.
I think the same scam is at epadlibrary.com