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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

#101

Post by sussmannbaka »

pquki4 wrote: post #38
webwielder2 wrote: post #6

Stick to checking out books from your library / Libby. You'll save money and might end up making discoveries you otherwise wouldn't.

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…

In the former case, congratulations, you now know which book to buy that’s likely not an AI scam.

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

#102

Post by bryanrasmussen »

al_borland wrote: post #21
ori_b wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*looks nervously at the AI revolution*

It seems a lot of people see the issues of AI coming, maybe not all of them, but certainly some. Too bad so many people and blinded by potential profits to care.

the issues of AI are pretty much the same issues of "software eating the world" and the internet, only more of it, so it's not that hard to be prescient on this matter.

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

#103

Post by SXX »

Beldin wrote: post #96
SXX wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dont you think problem with spam books is that someone actually buys them? Without enough demand no one would do it.

If you can get a copy of "100 money-saving tax tips" for $1.99, and the preview already sounds promising, wouldn't you? Even one good tip would easily save you the price of the book. (Also: to me, blaming demand is a bit victim blaming - these scams are deliberately set up to entice as many readers as possible.)

I mean if a person buys one such book for $1.99, not refunds it and afterwards he continue to buy same low-quality books then might be it wasn't such a bad deal for them? Might be they actually think they extracted enough value from it?

How it's different than any other low-quality literature which was always in abundance on the market? Except before copywriting cost $500 and now generated one cost $20 to produce.

Who should be ultimate censor of what books must be released an what books shouldn't?

PS: Same way some people love to buy cheap trash from AliExpress for $1.99 and at least generated books dont create actual e-waste, CO2 footprint and other pollution. And Amazon is now full with trash from AliExpress just 2x more expensive.

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

#104

Post by SXX »

jajko wrote: post #98
SXX wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dont you think problem with spam books is that someone actually buys them? Without enough demand no one would do it.

I don't get it, who buys them? My time is so precious (raising 2 small kids now) that I do quite a bit of research before committing so much of my time to it. There are literally millions of books out there. Even without kids, life is just so wonderful and intense to actually experience, stuff I pick up for just sitting and reading better have amazing reviews by many thousands. Yes, I won't support much some new star…

Most likely same people who buy random trash because it's cheap and "FREE DELIVERY WITH PRIME". People really need to be educated not to spend money on trash.

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

#105

Post by SXX »

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.

This. Subpar products will always be on market. Problem is that Amazon making a lot of money selling trash and everyone okay with this.

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

#106

Post by bambax »

janice1999 wrote: post #25
ungreased0675 wrote: post #5

The focus of the article is on charlatans selling courses, but I think Amazon deserves more scrutiny. They enable this entire ecosystem of fake books and fake products. I have to imagine that with the amount of data Amazon collects, they could do a lot more to counter the epidemic of fakes.

Amazon's 'solution' has been to limit self published authors to 3 new books a day. What a joke. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/20/amazon-restric...

Yes, that number is absurd. A normal person can maybe write a book a year, max. Stephen King can write two, but there's only one of him.

Maybe simple self-help books can be written a little faster, because they are shorter. A maximum set in words -- instead of books -- might work better; say 100-150k words per year?

But would that be enough? Wouldn't grifters create a multitude of accounts to publish their books?

Maybe the solution would be some kind of automated system to evaluate the quality of a book? It needn't be fine-grained, it would simply output "trash/non trash" and could try to test whether the book contains any new information not available elsewhere, or whether there are entire paragraphs taken verbatim from wikihow.

But AI-generated books may be hard to spot. Maybe there's no solution.

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

#107

Post by bambax »

whyenot wrote: post #65
protocolture wrote: post #61

The biggest issue is how Amazon fails to police its genre categorisations. The advice from the guys making garbage books, which they quite obviously put into practice, is to apply for genres with low book counts to more easily get a best seller badge for that category. Which makes Amazon a war to get miscategorised.

I'd argue an even bigger issue is the way Amazon clogs up its search and product listings with sponsored results. Amazon isn't interested in selling you what you are looking for. They want you to buy some sponsored junk instead. This mindset permeates the site and IMO is the source of many current problems.

Sponsored results are marked as such and therefore are filtered out by most adblockers. This is not a perfect solution, as grifters also game reviews, but it helps.

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

#108

Post by panick21_ »

isx726552 wrote: post #8
swatcoder wrote: post #4

Example #732453111 of how the 2000's-era dreams of technology-enabled infinite scaling were misguided and potentially damning for the Internet. Turns out scammers and spammers can technologically scale their side too, and can even do so in a way that the host profits from so that the host is disincentivized from doing anything about it until it's already gone too far. Now everything is flooded with noise and supporte…

This is why gatekeepers are still a good thing, and now the gatekeepers are themselves somewhat democratized. Lots of people now have their favorite YouTuber / Podcaster / etc. and get book recommendations from them. And there is now a much bigger selection of gatekeepers to choose from given the variety of content on those platforms. It’s not perfect, but overall it is an improvement in many ways. Now yes I would ag…

Exactly, I would never go to Amazon to look for books. I go to Amazon to buy a specific book. I already know what I want, Amazon is just the place I order it. Some stuff is also Amazon exclusive.

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

#109

Post by devoutsalsa »

myaccount80 wrote: post #100
devoutsalsa wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a consumer I love liberal return policies, as I can buy something I’m not sure about to try it out. When I was in Colombia, but avoided buying some AirPods because I couldn’t try them on, and once purchased I could not return them. When I buy shoes online , I’ll buy maybe 7 pairs, find the best fit, and return rest. As a vendor, I can’t imagine dealing with a high percentage of returns. I don’t know what the solut…

how do you feel about the resource waste of such return policies? Shipping all these items to then return most of them is an insane amount of waste. And sometimes returned items cannot be resold so they are thrown away. Imo there should be clear limits on returns

I'd prefer not to. In my case, it's nearly impossible to find shoes that fit. My size is not available in stores.

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

#110

Post by jamesdhutton »

I want to be a bit contrarian here. I buy books on my Kindle all the time. I always download a sample before buying. I do recall a couple of occasions where I got a sample that was one of the garbage books that this article is talking about. So yes, I've experienced it. But I don't experience it often. Nearly all the time, a search for an author or a topic brings up real, relevant books. Nearly all the time, Amazon's recommendations are for real, relevant books. So based on my own experience, I'd question how big the problem really is for the end consumer of books.
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