A couple of months ago I found out that one of the authors of the German publishing house STORY.ONE plagiarized one of my paintings (MARGARITAS) for their book cover. Because I, unlike them, am a decent human being, I contacted them via email through their website. Never heard back. So then, a week later, I posted a story, tagged both the publisher and the author, Thalía-Anna Hampf, they watched my story, but were still dead silent. At this point it's clear to me that they feel safe and fine since they're far away in Germany and I'm here, in Venezuela, stressed and mortified by things like, I don't know, dictatorships, censorship and violence? But hey, my work is very important to me, and so is respect and integrity, and what they've done to me is disgusting.
So I made my first post and, magically, they emailed me, Martin Blank from story.one in particular insisting that they had NOTHING to do with the cover, that it was all the author. According to them, they NEVER got my first email, huh? They also said that they were going to stop selling the book. Then their author, Thalía-Anna Hampf, DMd me, which was so awful she began by calling me by the wrong name and then editing it. It's funny, really, because in the same breath she says she knew NOTHING about the plagiarism, and distances herself from it, she also mentions that my name's in her book, cited as "inspiration". So which is it? How come you don't know? Did the book publish itself, since you're distancing yourself from the cover, and so is story.one? Honestly, did you even write that book, to begin with? How can you cite someone as "inspiration" without a quick Google research?
I didn't dignify that mess of an "apology" with a response, why bother? I told them that if they wanted to keep using my intellectual property they'd have to pay me, but since they said they were going to stop selling the book I just let it be. You see, I had more pressing matters to focus on, living in Venezuela and all. So fine, whatever.
Almost three months later and they're not only selling the book everywhere, but also on their OWN WEBSITE still. I mean, at this point why don't you just come to my house and slap my face, will you? I emailed them again, because I'm just nice like that, but it's been three weeks and, once again, dead silent. So clearly, we're dealing with criminals, there's not much I can do from here, but at least I can speak out about this, post it here, on my website, my YouTube channel and everywhere I can to warn people, especially artists.
VIDEO ABOUT MY EXPERIENCE (SPANISH)
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