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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

#141

Post by insane_dreamer »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #74
insane_dreamer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they could do a lot more to counter the epidemic of fakes they are not incentivized to do so, since they profit from the fakes; only if/when this results in customers disengaging from Amazon altogether and total sales decreasing, will it be seen as a problem

MBAs will never understand intrinsically that $1 in extra profit from a ripped-off customer is dangerous profit if that churn it increases your future CAC by more than >$1

Even if they understand that, MBA executives will be judged by profit targets hit __this year__, not when the crows come to roost 3 years from now.

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

#142

Post by Fatnino »

sph wrote: post #92
kredd wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Who? There's your problem. I have never heard of Temu, and neither have many who know (and use) Amazon.

Temu has been advertising hard in the US. But it doesn't have to be temu specifically, any Chinese retailer will have all the crap you can imagine for next to nothing with the caveat of long shipping times.

They also all seem to have an orange colored website.

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

#143

Post by Beldin »

SXX wrote: post #103
Beldin wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Wh…

> How it's different...

"They" use software to create many slightly tweaked copies under seemingly different author names. So the low effort of one cobbled together book takes the space of 20 or 30 books. I.e. anyone not playing this game is quickly drowned out by the ones who do.

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

The issue isn't censorship - or actually, it kind of is, but then by the fraudsters "censoring" non-fraudster books by swamping the market.

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

#144

Post by mkl »

bambax wrote: post #122
mkl wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 per day is absurd, but so is a maximum of one book a year. Here are some people who beat that by miles: https://thebookslist.com/most-prolific-authors/

> The second most prolific fiction writer is Charles Hamilton, 1876-1961. It is basically impossible to count his books but he is known to have written more than 100 million words, which is the equivalent of 1,200 full length novels He also wrote about 5000 short stories. Of course there will be outliers in any category, but even then... 100 million words divided by 60 years of activity (?) is 1.6 million words a yea…

At 40 hours per week that's only ≈770 words per hour on average, which seems achievable.

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

#145

Post by webwielder2 »

AlbertCory wrote: post #72
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 doing my research on current books, I checked out a few from the library that were really good and definitely HN-worthy: Bill and Dave (Michael Malone). The history of Hewlett-Packard. Legends & Lattes: A Novel of High Fantasy and Low Stakes (Travis Baldree) Hitch-22 (Christopher Hitchens). his memoir

Oh I loved Infinite Loop by Malone. Bill and Dave sounds like an insta-checkout for me.

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

#146

Post by flumpcakes »

My wife got a vegetarian recipe book from her family for her birthday from Amazon. It had multiple recipes with meat in... it had hundreds of reviews with an an average of 4+. Amazon is just full of garbage and fake reviews.

I now only buy books that seem reputable. To a lesser extent, pakt books are also not great. This time they aren't exactly AI generated, but they are very low quality content. So you can't even trust publishers.

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

#147

Post by dayjaby »

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…

I'm glad I did that years ago.

Amazon Music playing ads even during purchased songs.

Kindle tokens expiring as soon as you stop your monthly subscription.

Enough is enough.

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

#148

Post by n_ary »

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

Amazon prefers that people return goods. Last month, I bought something and immediately on next day price fell a bit. Contacting amazon support to see if they would offer me a partial refund of the difference(as my order didn't still ship), they told me that they don't do that anymore and I should deny the delivery and order at new price. After 2 days of my second order, first order was actually shipped(irrelevant to me at this stage), but the price now fell significantly(~35% of original), so I simply ordered at a new price and waited. Took me around 1.5 month to get my thing, but ultimately, this could be avoided if amazon was nice enough to give me a partial refund.

Also, here in EU, amazon recently reduced their return window, from 30 days to 14 days after receiving, so some limits are being put in place, because some of my friends order a lot of things to make unboxing videos/tiktok and other crap and then return it, which is real waste.

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

#149

Post by BigParm »

I think you meant Amazon is filled with garbage, period.

There are more scams than legit products. It used to be the cheapest option, now it's the most expensive. Everyone is just reselling from Ali Express. The quality of the Amazon store went way downhill.

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

#150

Post by paledot »

morkalork wrote: post #10
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.

How about this account for a "polymath" who manages to churn out a "book" almost every week on topics from AI to installing cabinets and a whole bunch of pseudo science woo woo: https://www.amazon.ca/stores/D.R.-T-Stephens/author/B0CC62LX... They buy a lot of ads so I guess Amazon likes them.

I love how the person's name is D.R. T Stephens. Not D.R.T. Stephens and definitely not Dr. T. Stephens, no matter what you may be expected to read.
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