A HELENSBURGH author has hit out at online profiteers after noticing a second-hand copy of one of his books was being offered for sale for nearly three times its original price.

Calum E. Douglas, author of The Secret Horsepower Race, made the discovery recently when a special edition of the book, originally sold at £45, was listed online for £110.

Mr Douglas said he was angry that none of the inflated prices for online sales of second-hand books would make their way back to the people who originally wrote them.

The 42-year-old, who now works for the Red Bull Formula 1 motor racing team, described the situation as “unusual” because his book is still currently in print.

He said: “It normally only happens with rare books which have been out of print for 30 or something years.”

Mr Douglas said he wrote the book over the course of six years.

The Secret Horsepower Race is a technical history and chronological narrative of wartime aviation, mainly the engines that went in the planes, beginning in 1930 and ending at the end of World War Two.

He has travelled all over the world, including visiting Ferrari’s Formula 1 factory in Italy to give talks on his book.

Mr Douglas said the situation makes him angry as he knows how much work authors put in to creating works.

He added: “It makes me quite angry for authors in general. It’s not good that that can happen, and you won’t get any of the money from that.

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“These are not private sales. A firm of some description is making profit from an in-copyright, in-print book, which is totally fine, but not if the author gets cut out.

“I know how much work it is to get a book published. It’s a bit sad that people spend a lot of years working on something and then it can just get flogged about and you don’t get anything further from it.”

Mr Douglas grew up in Helensburgh and went to Hermitage Academy. He later moved to Germany for some time but is back living in his home town once more.

Talking about the inspiration behind the book, Calum said it is something he has always been really interested in and that recently there has been an “explosion” of interest in the subject.

Going forward, the author explained what he feels is the “big issue” with second-hand sales.

He said: “It’s not so much that the book might be getting sold second hand for a lot.

“The problem is that they’re not getting any of that, no matter how much it sells for.”