Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fake Books

lcamtuf.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 371 posts

Re: Fake Books

#111

Post by coldtea »

gzer0 wrote: post #10

This has been a concern of mine for a while; I have also published absolute garbage just to see how far I can take it. I've published music under various pseudonyms, books underneath different pen-names... the list goes on. I've retracted such publications, but it is frightening if one person like myself had the curiosity to try, what is already out there, and, what a well-funded nation-state actor could do. ---- Pos…

>and, what a well-funded nation-state actor could do.

Release crap books nobody will read, or fill Soundcloud with bad music?

Re: Fake Books

#112

Post by RF_Savage »

coldtea wrote: post #111
gzer0 wrote: post #10

This has been a concern of mine for a while; I have also published absolute garbage just to see how far I can take it. I've published music under various pseudonyms, books underneath different pen-names... the list goes on. I've retracted such publications, but it is frightening if one person like myself had the curiosity to try, what is already out there, and, what a well-funded nation-state actor could do. ---- Pos…

> and, what a well-funded nation-state actor could do. Release crap books nobody will read, or fill Soundcloud with bad music?

I think NKRFZ had a video about a weird genre of pro-war fiction that is published en mass in Russia and promoted quite alot, but which does not really sell.

Re: Fake Books

#113

Post by hk__2 »

jcynix wrote: post #61
femto wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote one of those books. That is, a Wikipedia article I largely wrote was plagiarised and published in a book by a scammer. Some time later my words on Wikipedia were tagged as having been plagiarised from the scammer's book. It was clear from wiki timestamps and publication dates what really happened, so it got fixed, but it's irritating that one needs to waste time on things like that (and as far as I know the b…

> as far as I know the book is still on Amazon I would have expected that. Amazon neither has the staff with expertise to investigate claims nor much interest in removing products that earn them a nice share. Knowledge is fungible nowadays, and in these cases of "fake books" its volatile too. It's the virtual gold rush on the Internet and companies which supply resources (ebook platforms, search engines, but hardware…

> I would have expected that. Amazon neither has the staff with expertise to investigate claims nor much interest in removing products that earn them a nice share

If the book attributes its content to Wikipedia, it’s perfectly legal. The issue then becomes "should Amazon remove low-quality products from their website?" (and the underlying issue is "what does 'low-quality' mean?"), and the response is no because they want to act as a platform.

Re: Fake Books

#114

Post by elefanten »

mkl wrote: post #71
elefanten wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10,000? Could it be 100,000? I have to write 10,000 words overnight occasionally in my role. If it’s $2500 for 10k words, maybe I should be ghostwriting…

What role do you have that requires that kind of output?

Corporate strategy consulting. 1 day to write 5k-10k words on a topic you have to research from scratch is not uncommon. It's all within a broad field of expertise and a sector you're familiar with, but could be products / companies / deals you'd never heard of.

I think the point here was that the ghostwriting is of really low quality. Overnight 10k reports are never groundbreaking or enlightening additions to human knowledge, but they need to be 90%+ accurate and polished enough to inform.

Re: Fake Books

#115

Post by leobg »

mypastself wrote: post #40

Alarmingly enough, not even the one- or two-star Amazon reviews caught the garbled nonsense, indicating that not even real people bothered to read the book in detail. I’m wondering if any person on the planet other than the author of the article read this best-selling book in its entirety. Because even the book’s purported author likely didn’t.

Well, if people don’t actually invest any time and effort into consuming the books they buy, then perhaps it is an inevitable adaptation on the part of authors to also not invest any time and effort into creating them.

(The rise of Blinkist et. al. seems to support the idea that many people value being able to say that they have read a book much more highly than actually reading it.)

Re: Fake Books

#117

Post by jerrygoyal »

gzer0 wrote: post #10

This has been a concern of mine for a while; I have also published absolute garbage just to see how far I can take it. I've published music under various pseudonyms, books underneath different pen-names... the list goes on. I've retracted such publications, but it is frightening if one person like myself had the curiosity to try, what is already out there, and, what a well-funded nation-state actor could do. ---- Pos…

how much money did that make though

Re: Fake Books

#118

Post by nicbou »

derefr wrote: post #46
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #16

I think there’s a good chance it was ghost written by a content farm for someone who wanted to publish a book in a popular category to make a quick buck. I recently learned that this is a soft-scam technique advocated for by a couple of guys called the Mikkelson Twins. They say you can make money by publishing audiobooks on audible by finding a popular topic on audible, then hiring a ghost writing service to write yo…

> Except what the Mikkelson Twins actually make money on is selling you on a “money making course” where they tell you to do the above. So there’s all kinds of people trying to follow this method out there, it seems. How do people still become wealthy selling "money making courses", when enough people have created "money making courses" that they are, themselves, a commodity?

You sell a money making course course generator and sell that

Re: Fake Books

#119

Post by jcynix »

hk__2 wrote: post #113
jcynix wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as far as I know the book is still on Amazon I would have expected that. Amazon neither has the staff with expertise to investigate claims nor much interest in removing products that earn them a nice share. Knowledge is fungible nowadays, and in these cases of "fake books" its volatile too. It's the virtual gold rush on the Internet and companies which supply resources (ebook platforms, search engines, but hardware…

> I would have expected that. Amazon neither has the staff with expertise to investigate claims nor much interest in removing products that earn them a nice share If the book attributes its content to Wikipedia, it’s perfectly legal. The issue then becomes "should Amazon remove low-quality products from their website?" (and the underlying issue is "what does 'low-quality' mean?"), and the response is no because they…

> If the book attributes its content to Wikipedia, it’s perfectly legal.

Sure, but I remember seeing books which didn't attribute their source. I only noted the "similarity" while searching for info on certain topics. Sorry, I didn't document them, because I just thought, ok, the next scam.

Re: Fake Books

#120

Post by coldtea »

RF_Savage wrote: post #112
coldtea wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and, what a well-funded nation-state actor could do. Release crap books nobody will read, or fill Soundcloud with bad music?

I think NKRFZ had a video about a weird genre of pro-war fiction that is published en mass in Russia and promoted quite alot, but which does not really sell.

Pro-war fiction? That's like the standard movie for several decades from Rambo to Michael Bay's epics and Top Gun Maverick, and in movie form that has far wider appeal, 10000x the audiences, and is way more glamorous! "weird pro war fiction" would be very low in effectiveness...
Post reply on HN