The Professional Guide – and a rip off!

We are delighted to announce that this month Dr Janice Joneja’s ‘big’ book on histamine, Histamine Intolerance: A Comprehensive Guide for Healthcare Professionals, will hit the high street.  Well, it will hit the Amazon high street anyhow!!

It is officially published on the 27th but you can already pre-order on the site here. (Or, if you happen to be reading this in the US, you can order it here.)

Dr Joneja had always wanted to write a comprehensive guide. But because she is a scientist and a researcher as well as a clinician, we felt that the book that she would like to write might be somewhat above the head of the average reader. Which is why we persuaded her to start off with a Beginner’s Guide, designed for any one of us who thought that we might be suffering from histamine intolerance and wanted to know what to do about it. That done (and done very successfully) she could then move on to the ‘professional’ guide, designed to help fellow healthcare professionals who might want to know more about this little understood condition.

Meanwhile the Beginner’s Guide to Histamine Intolerance, which was published earlier this year, is finding many appreciative readers (see below for an email from a recent purchaser) and is continuing to fly off Amazon shelves both in its ‘e’ and its paperback formats. (Go here to buy the ‘e-book’ in the UK and here to buy the paperback; go here to by then e-book in the US and here to buy the paperback.)

However….. Possibly the greatest proof of it success is that a couple of weeks ago a new ebook on histamine appeared on Amazon – Histamine Intolerance Beginners Diagnosing Intolerance. The title was already somewhat suspect but when sleuth Hannah looked into it she found that it was VERY heavily based on ‘our’ book and, as she said, ‘very poorly re-written, like someone basing their school work on someone else’s essay’.  An obvious rip-off.

Hannah reported this to Amazon and the offending book was removed from sale. She then  received an email from the ‘publisher’:

Hello,
I have just received an email saying that i have used a title which you own the rights to. 
I am really sorry. I did not even think there may be someone with the rights to this title. 
I am pretty new to this book publishing thing so please let me know what happens now?   Thak a lot, M

(Some dodgy grammar and spelling for a publisher there…)

Hannah emailed back, somewhat stiffly, to the effect that Dr Joneja owned the copyright and that he should keep his hands off – which elicited a further grammatically dodgy email:

My book is not based on your book. It is based on histamine intolerance. I hired a writer to create content on the subject and i have not even read your book so if some of it is plagiarised can you please show me where and i can solve the issue with my writer. If it is just the title that you have an issue with i think you are being a bit dramatic.

I will not bore you with the subsequent exchange. Suffice it to say that it ended with a grovelling apology from said ‘publisher’ who blamed it all on his ‘writer’ and promised not to do any such thing again.

So, thanks to Hannah’s vigilance, all ended well – but a salutary warning to prospective ‘self publishers’ – especially of e-books. If they look as though they are going to be successful (very easy to track) there is a good chance that someone will plagiarise them. All too easy to whack it up on Amazon where it could sell for many months or even years unless an observant author or reader happens to notice it and gets suspicious. See this article in The Atlantic last year for more detail.

Meanwhile, Hannah, keep your eyes peeled……

 

Letter to Dr Joneja from  CM – a very happy purchaser of the Beginner’s Guide:

I am a 47 year old female that has been struggling with nausea and vomiting for two years with the problem worsening over the past 7 months.  My story is like many of the stories in your book, I have had a negative upper and lower GI and allergy testing that came back positive for Lobster and Almonds but I seldom eat either of these foods.  I now live in Missouri but I was born and raised in Maine so I have eaten a lot of lobster in my life and have never had a reaction that I remember.

Between my gastroenterologist and allergist they placed me on Cetirizine 10 mg twice a day and Ranitidine 150 mg twice a day.  This took care of my nausea and vomiting but after a couple of weeks I became very constipated and felt like I was in a fog all the time.  I researched the side effects of antihistamines and found that they cause both of my symptoms.  The gastroenterologist put me on Trulance 3mg a day for the constipation which caused severe diarrhea.  After 7 months, 25 pounds of weight loss, multiple tests and no answers from my doctors I finally decided to figure this out on my own.  After googling histamine problems I found a article online about your research and I immediately ordered your book.

I have stopped taking all the medicine I was on and have been following the low histamine diet for two months.  I feel so much better.  It has not taken the nausea away completely but it has greatly improved it.  I still get very sick the last week of the month but from reading your book I am guessing it is hormone related since that is the time I would normally menstrate. (I had a hysterectomy in December 2016 to remove a honeydew sized fibroid that was causing lower back pain and numbness in both of my legs but I kept my ovaries)

Thank you again for your work with histamine intolerance.  My doctor’s were beginning to think I was crazy and I was at my wits end!  Your book and diet have encouraged me and I feel like I have my life back.  I still don’t know the underlying cause of my increase in histamine but at least by following your diet I can control my symptoms most of the time.  I am deeply appreciative of your efforts.