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Fake Books

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141–150 of 371 posts

Re: Fake Books

#141
post #46

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 make courses about how to make money making courses.

This reminds me of an episode of Reply All. They ordered some cheap Rolex rip off, it was even worse than they expected. They found out they were all being sold on shopify and that if you sign up for a new account on shopify you'll fairly quickly start getting spam emails helping you setup a shop of all this crap. Then they'd try to sell you on lessons on how to make it more successful. I forgot if the rabbit hole went deeper.

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/dvhe3l

Re: Fake Books

#142

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.

That assumes selling is the point. What if drowning out other voices is the real goal?

Re: Fake Books

#143
post #63

Amazon is full of fake/generated/auto translated books in every category. Just search for any programming language and sort it by release date. I don't understand why they don't fix this problem. It's pretty easy to fix and all those sales don't generate a significant amount of revenue for Amazon considering the negative experience for clients. Such books are pretty easy to spot since the majority of reviews are writ…

> I don't understand why they don't fix this problem. Because they act as a platform an the platform makes a living by its transactions and not by the quality of the content.

But there are other platforms out there (especially for books) that people will prefer if they make it easier to find high-quality content. I’m with the poster you replied to; it would make sense for Amazon to go after these fake products.

Re: Fake Books

#144
Not exactly the same though related: IIRC there's another scam on Amazon where people self-publish some ebooks which are clearly gibberish, put a massive price tag on it, and use hacked accounts to buy them. Very low effort and essentially free money, because no physical goods are involved. It's been discussed here a year ago or so.

Re: Fake Books

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a brilliant (but very sad) video. The ghost writers get about $2500 for a 10,000 word book researched and written in a month. I guess this is cheaper than using GPT-3 and having to prune out the flights of fancy/complete nonsense that GPT-3 can sometimes generate.

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…

“I apologize for such a long letter - I didn't have time to write a short one.” ― Mark Twain

Re: Fake Books

#146
post #63

Amazon is full of fake/generated/auto translated books in every category. Just search for any programming language and sort it by release date. I don't understand why they don't fix this problem. It's pretty easy to fix and all those sales don't generate a significant amount of revenue for Amazon considering the negative experience for clients. Such books are pretty easy to spot since the majority of reviews are writ…

Affects older books too. I've found books that were very obviously printed scans of library books, including dog-ears, missing pages and the odd pencil lines. https://www.marginalia.nu/shitty-book/pencil2.webp https://www.marginalia.nu/shitty-book/fadeout.webp https://www.marginalia.nu/shitty-book/pencil.webp Appears they're printing these on demand on essentially bleached office-grade paper. The orange tint is from…

yeah I saw that too. They take the books from archive.org, it’s public domains books.

It’s essentially legal, and I think it’s not that scammy honestly. People want these books on paper, nobody prints them anymore or has the texts.

edit: I also saw some people selling the OCR from these books, which is far worse. You need to guess the original, especially if it has some latin/german inside English.

Re: Fake Books

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's that scary. I mean it's basically spam isn't it? The only thing new is the volume in which you can produce surface-level-indistinguishable spam. It is now cheaper to produce lots of flowery, meaningless text that is full of definitions. I suspect that the future of literature is more concise and externally-meaningful writing. Amazon is a terrible marketplace insofar as the rating system isn't sybil…

Yes, for now. But what will these models look like in something like 5-10 more years?

Well, what does it matter? What if a market develops for autogenerated junk literature. People can buy and read what they like best. Today a lot of literature is published that I might consider to be "junk". But there are people buying and reading it and enjoying it and that's fine.

Maybe it could create a new genre of literature that is tailored to the reader's interests.

Re: Fake Books

#149
post #46

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?

The secret to getting rich quick is to get other people to pay you for the secret to getting rich quick.

Re: Fake Books

#150
post #81

It's virtual evolution at work, i.e. spam evolution. It's the Internet Gold Rush (i.e. "make money fast" at work), which we have watched getting "more professional" in the last ten to twenty years. And because those companies which supply resources (ebook platforms, search engines, but also hardware for crypto mining like graphics cards etc) to those "virtual miners" profit from what's going on, we won't see that fix…

> BTW, anybody interested in my upcoming book on quantum heating? Quantum heating will even earn you money, because it will generate certain energy efficient by-products which you can sell at your favourite online retailer ;-)

As a seller of magic electric recycling heaters who you just bankrupted, let me repay you in kind: everyone, you can easily DIY this "quantum heating" thing: it's just an automated pipeline of GPT-3 to LeanPub and purchasing ads that show up in Quanta Magazine (hence "quantum"), where you run GPT-3 locally so you can keep your home warm with the heat generated by your PC.

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