Well this is awkward: Jack Ma book being pirated on Alibaba store

Alibaba is getting an awkward reminder of its stores’ counterfeiting problems. A new biography of Alibaba founder and chairman Jack Ma is now being pirated on the ecommerce titan’s Taobao marketplace, Tech in Asia has discovered.

Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built by Duncan Clark, which came out earlier this month, is now available as a dodgy ebook on Taobao for as little as US$0.43. The hardcover costs US$17.96 on Amazon, and the Kindle version can be bought for US$14.99.

One Taobao merchant promises to email the customer a link to a file-hosting service, from which the buyer can then download the ebook as a file.

The priciest ebook seller on Taobao has the biography for sale at US$0.60. The Taobao listing includes an Amazon-style preview of the first few pages of the book, confirming that it’s the same book that’s for sale through official channels.

That same vendor has 242 suspiciously cheap ebooks for sale on his or her Taobao store. The most popular one in terms of the number of favorites is Personal Branding for Brits. They’re mainly in English, so they’re catering to a niche audience among Taobao’s mostly China-based customers.

We’ve contacted Alibaba on this matter, and we will update when we hear back. (Updated four hours after publishing: An Alibaba spokesperson responds, “Taobao Marketplace is committed to the protection of intellectual property rights and the fight against counterfeiting. After notification of suspicious products listings, we take action to review them and remove those that violate applicable law or our policies. We welcome users to report any suspected case of intellectual property rights violation to us.”)

The well-received book details how Jack Ma built Alibaba into a company that has over 400 million shoppers on its main Taobao and Tmall marketplaces and is now worth close to US$200 billion.

See: Alibaba’s World is an insider’s look at China’s ecommerce powerhouse: book review

Since Taobao and Tmall are made up of independent merchants, Alibaba faces an ongoing issue with fake and pirated goods. It’s a battle that Jack Ma claims Alibaba is winning.

“If before we were huffing and puffing to chase down and kill mice, now what we’re going to do is annihilate the environment the mice need to survive,” Ma said last month in reference to being more proactive in stamping out the vendors who sell fake items.

Converted from Chinese Yuan. Rate: US$1 = RMB 6.48.