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Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how they get made

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Re: Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how they get made

#81

Post by enobrev »

Animats wrote: post #80
CSMastermind wrote: post #67

> Amazon is filled with garbage Full stop, no need to specify e-books. I've moved my purchasing dollars elsewhere at this point with the exception of some very specific categories. Amazon is just too unreliable.

Right. After I got a recall notice on some Amazon vitamins because they were counterfeit, I stopped ordering much of anything from Amazon. A competing "direct from the manufacturer" sales site would be useful. Only the business that actually makes the thing could sell it. No intermediaries.

I canceled prime earlier this year when they announced ads in prime video, which I rarely used but seemed like a red flag. I'd lost trust in them for consumable products long ago.

I've saved a good deal of money, and waiting a couple extra days for delivery has only been a minor inconvenience .

I had the same thought a couple weeks ago regarding direct-from-manufactuerer product search / purchase. I'd use it regularly.

Re: Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how they get made

#82

Post by jcranmer »

kiernanmcgowan wrote: post #43
well_actulily wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Highlights include: - "In Search of a Flat Earth" (2020): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44 - "Line Goes Up" (2022): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g - "The Future is a Dead Mall" (2023): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiZhdpLXZ8Q

This is Financial Advice (2023) is also excellent - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pYeoZaoWrA Its about the fallout of the memestock craze and where the community ends up.

So I thought I had known most of that material, but I had somehow missed the entire thing about the mother-of-all-short-squeezes being a global financial apocalypse that brings down the entire system...

Which actually raises the interesting question: just how can you even entertain a belief that you'd somehow leverage billion-dollar profits in such a situation? I mean, I know it's completely divorced from reality. I can understand the appeal of the conspiracy theory, I can understand how they think they've found the one loophole that makes infinite money, I can understand the proof-by-contortionist-decoding-of-secret-messages. But not how you can even seriously think, in a world where you found the thread that will let you pull one over the big guys in a serious way, that the government--the people whom you believe to be colluding with the Big Them™ to screw you over--will willingly be held hostage by you in the grand climax and let you extort great gains rather than changing the rules of the game (which is literally their job). I mean, in standard apocalyptic literature, it's the role of God--a higher power not subject to the observable rules of the game--who plays the role of wreaking the final vengeance and rewarding the pious faithful; but here, in this theory, it's the bad guys who are supposed to wreak vengeance against themselves and reward their enemies for being faithful to the higher script.

The other thing is I think the video is still a bit premature; it was written soon after the bankruptcy of Bed, Bath & Beyond, so it doesn't have much to go on for how the movement evolved afterwards, and I would have liked to learn more about that.

Re: Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how they get made

#83

Post by Turing_Machine »

beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #45
pquki4 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In principle yes, but it is often far less than ideal. Popular books often have only 2 copies, physical or digital, so you need to wait in the queue for a while before you can get to read it. And that's only if your library carries the book, physical or digital -- there is often a long delay before you can find book in a bookstore and you can find it on the shelve. For various reasons the library might not want to pu…

If you want to purchase a book on Amazon, then your best bet is to just only look for books sold and published by a reputable or at least known publisher. This is especially true for a lot of older books, which often have great editions in the midst of awful "print on demand" versions or new typesettings of old public domain version with awful quality and editing. (Then, even further, you might as well just cut out A…

"Reputable publishers" put out garbage books all the time.

Remember "Snooki"? Four books for sale on Amazon, all published by a "reputable publisher" (in fact, a division of Simon and Schuster).

Of the current top 20 best sellers list:

https://www.amazon.com/best-sellers-books-Amazon/zgbs/books/...

I'd rate at least 15 as "garbage books" on sight.

"Reputable publishers" are in business to make money. Some of them may put on airs of intellectual quality, but in fact if trash books make a buck, they will publish them. If high-quality books are unlikely to make a profit, they will not.

Re: Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how they get made

#84

Post by BLKNSLVR »

ethbr1 wrote: post #77
CSMastermind wrote: post #67

> Amazon is filled with garbage Full stop, no need to specify e-books. I've moved my purchasing dollars elsewhere at this point with the exception of some very specific categories. Amazon is just too unreliable.

Agreed. I let my Prime subscription expire a few days ago. Amazon's thrown in the towel on streaming and decided it'd rather be an ad-supported model with Freevee (which also eventually inherits Prime-exclusive shows). For the rare instances I do want to order something physical from Amazon, waiting isn't a problem. For the rest of the time, I'd rather my dollars go anywhere else. When someone like me looks at Walmar…

The thing I always underestimate, in regards to bad / anti-consumer behaviour, is the size of the customer base (and sometimes in combination with the bell curve / normal distribution of intelligence, but maybe not in this case).

The scope of humanity that use Amazon is gigantic, and the percentage of us pedantic, technically knowledgeable folks who'd give up some convenience, time, or even the purchase of an item, as part of a "righteous crusade" is vanishingly small.

Amazon may even increase their sales as consumer X purchases a replacement "thing 2" because "thing 1" was dead on arrival, and money these days ain't worth the hassle of returning or getting a refund on "thing 1".

Re: Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how they get made

#85

Post by kredd »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #84
ethbr1 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I let my Prime subscription expire a few days ago. Amazon's thrown in the towel on streaming and decided it'd rather be an ad-supported model with Freevee (which also eventually inherits Prime-exclusive shows). For the rare instances I do want to order something physical from Amazon, waiting isn't a problem. For the rest of the time, I'd rather my dollars go anywhere else. When someone like me looks at Walmar…

The thing I always underestimate, in regards to bad / anti-consumer behaviour, is the size of the customer base (and sometimes in combination with the bell curve / normal distribution of intelligence, but maybe not in this case). The scope of humanity that use Amazon is gigantic, and the percentage of us pedantic, technically knowledgeable folks who'd give up some convenience, time, or even the purchase of an item, a…

It works until people look at things like Temu, and figure out “why should I get from Amazon, when I can buy something for the same quality”. It’s just a battle of giants.

Re: Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how they get made

#86

Post by neilv »

Even when Bezos was at the helm, Amazon had tons of trash and nonsense in its marketplace...

But it'd be epic if Bezos got all pissed off about things like these books -- and various other declines of his baby -- so he forced his way back, to smack it into better shape.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleansing_of_the_Temple

(Why I'd guess there's a nonzero chance of this happening is that, externally, it sounded like Bezos cared strongly about certain ideas, and implemented them forcefully, yet it seems like lately those ideas are being disregarded. If there's any truth to that external impression, then there could be a reckoning. Billions of dollars buys some latitude.)

Re: Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how they get made

#87

Post by jillesvangurp »

enobrev wrote: post #81
Animats wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. After I got a recall notice on some Amazon vitamins because they were counterfeit, I stopped ordering much of anything from Amazon. A competing "direct from the manufacturer" sales site would be useful. Only the business that actually makes the thing could sell it. No intermediaries.

I canceled prime earlier this year when they announced ads in prime video, which I rarely used but seemed like a red flag. I'd lost trust in them for consumable products long ago. I've saved a good deal of money, and waiting a couple extra days for delivery has only been a minor inconvenience . I had the same thought a couple weeks ago regarding direct-from-manufactuerer product search / purchase. I'd use it regularl…

I did the same thing. But for different reasons.

I cancelled both Netflix and Amazon Prime last year and decided to do account hopping on a month by month basis. Their greed is what triggered this. Both have gone down a path of less and less interesting content, price increases, and now indeed this ad driven bullshit. I realized I'm paying 20 euros per month for both and struggling to find something worth watching for months.

So, I cancelled both and went over to Apple TV. They don't have a lot but what they have is quite nice. Once I'm done with that, I'll consider what to subscribe to next. Criteria here: whatever I pick has to have stuff I want to watch (ad free, obviously) and I'll unsubscribe the second I get bored. I'm done paying for multiple streaming services at the same time. I only want the good stuff. I'm not interested in the generic filler content, B movies, etc. that are cheap to license but horrible to watch.

I might come back to Netflix or Prime periodically to check certain shows. But not on a permanent basis. If more people do this, that gives them a nice price signal that they need to invest in quality.

Re: Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how they get made

#88

Post by Beldin »

CSMastermind wrote: post #67

> Amazon is filled with garbage Full stop, no need to specify e-books. I've moved my purchasing dollars elsewhere at this point with the exception of some very specific categories. Amazon is just too unreliable.

Nevertheless, spam ebooks do deserve a separate category. There is an actual industry around spam ebooks that offers aspiring fraudsters the tools to quickly cobble together junk with enough stolen content that readers are getting their $0.99 worth. (That latter part helps raise the bar against refund requests.) Moreover, this industry has developed tools and mechanisms to SEO and spam your fraudulent book. Why launch it as ine book, instead of 20 by 20 different authors, with slight variations on the title?

Some of these tricks may be used for physical products as well, but at least they need to deliver a physical product. In the case of spam ebooks, this pipeline takes care of everything. You click around for a few hours, launch the software: bam, 20 junk books with just enough content to not warrant refunds and SEO'd titles to get at least a few dozen sales.

I looked into this well over a decade ago; back then, you could buy a set of DVDs that would teach (and, perhaps, assist) you in perpetrating this. I get the appeal: back then a popular category was tax tip books. Scrape some tips from here and there, slap on a dozen titles and author names, and sell for low enough that people don't mind taking a chance on your crap. Pity Amazon still hasn't made any successful steps against this.

Re: Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how they get made

#90

Post by herbst »

nl wrote: post #76

The problem here isn't the garbage ebooks (there will always be garbage). It's the terrible Amazon shopping experience which puts no value on the customer getting a good product. EBay (!) is much better.

AliExpress has by far better customer support und money back solutions and even better shipping times in many cases if you don't live in a official Amazon country.

Even wish refunds faster and less complicated in case of no delivery.

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