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Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how they get made
- csours 3y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biYciU1uiUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biYciU1uiUw Linked doco by Dan Olson. Strong recommend.
- blackhaj7 3y agoDamn this is so good
- all2 3y agoI watched the whole thing. I was bummed that he didn't do the whole course; have the audio book made, sell it, profit.
- paulette449 3y ago"Dollar General Winklevi" Amazing
- mey 3y agoHis other long form videos are also a great combination of research and comedy. Worth your time in my opinion.
- well_actulily 3y agoHighlights include: - "In Search of a Flat Earth" (2020): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44 - "Line Goes Up" (2022): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g - "The Future is a Dead Mall" (2023): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiZhdpLXZ8Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiZhdpLXZ8Q
- kiernanmcgowan 3y agoThis is Financial Advice (2023) is also excellent - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pYeoZaoWrA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pYeoZaoWrA Its about the fallout of the memestock craze and where the community ends up.
- jcranmer 3y agoSo 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.
- automatic6131 3y agoI know what you mean, but we both know the how. The "I will be rich by the end of it" square is fixed, the route taken to that square will go by any path just barely plausible. If you point out one is impossible - that the Big Them will screw them over - well, the Bigger They In The Shadows will force them to follow The Secret Rules. Yeah, you and I wouldn't entertain this, but if one fixes the desired ending, then the contortions in the middle don't matter as much. "if not like this, then it will be that".
- DavidPiper 3y agoYes! Came here to recommend this video as well. Dan Olson (Folding Ideas) has some of the best long-form content on YouTube, period.
- melondonkey 3y agoUsually pretty scam savvy but dropped my guard and bought an absolute garbage AI translation of The Little Prince on Amazon. Now I research anything before buying
- smcin 3y agoWhat are the fastest ways to find telltale signs you missed?
- swatcoder 3y agoExample #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 supported by ads and meaningful human participation in content approval or customer service is infeasible because we're already on the far side of the transition and they can't match the established scale. Whoops!
- MR4D 3y agoClearly we didn't think this through back then. It should have been obvious to us that it is easier to create noise than it is to create signal. The idyllic dream of a free internet with long tails would be replaced with a steadily worsening signal to noise ratio. We cheered on when Google supplanted Yahoo! because the computers were better at curating than humans. Man, we clearly sucked at choosing the right path. Dreams of utopia always hit hard when they fall.
- ori_b 3y ago*looks nervously at the AI revolution*
- al_borland 3y agoIt 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.
- munk-a 3y agoUnfortunately all the people with money can see nothing but upsides.
- wildrhythms 3y ago
- ungreased0675 3y agoThe 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.
- morkalork 3y agoHow 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/B0CC62LX4H https://www.amazon.ca/stores/D.R.-T-Stephens/author/B0CC62LX... They buy a lot of ads so I guess Amazon likes them.
- because_789 3y agoI wouldn’t wish a forced-read of that guy’s bio on my worst enemy. (But I did just send it to all my close friends.)
- cscurmudgeon 3y agoLol, even the author's image is AI generated. The text screams ChatGPT. Amazon has given up on AI.
- paledot 3y agoI 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.
- janice1999 3y agoAmazon'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-restricts-authors-from-self-publishing-more-than-three-books-a-day-after-ai-concerns https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/20/amazon-restric...
- deleted 3y ago
- webwielder2 3y agoStick to checking out books from your library / Libby. You'll save money and might end up making discoveries you otherwise wouldn't.
- whartung 3y agoAt my library you can check out sewing machines and power tools as well. And CA libraries have access to courses on Coursera.
- jtotheh 3y agoMy local library gives access to O'Reilly Safari. You have to click around a bit more than if you had a full price account but I think it's a great resource.
- al_borland 3y agoMine gives access to the Wall Street Journal. As well as some other papers. It only lasts 3 days, but clicking the link again gets another 3 days.
- cheese_van 3y agoLibraries are excellent gatekeepers for content quality. Generally, library books are scrutinized and determined as "worth paying for". Previously, publishers would do similar due diligence - someone at the house would actually read the book, if not work with authors. Due diligence of this nature is not now particularly common. There is no cost risk with a digital book. It could be, and often is, written by those without the talent to match their ambition. If one is looking for new authors to read, it's very difficult to sort through the dreck. Let the libraries sort through the dreck for you. Pro-tip: gift your local library a mere $100. They'll love you for it and invite you to all sorts of interesting gatherings. You might meet a good book, or even better, a good person.
- nytesky 3y agoIf you look for a reputable publisher like McSweeney or Scholastic, does that help?
- cush 3y agoIf there any kind of liability for Amazon, they’d be able to stop this practice in a heartbeat
- wepple 3y agoIs there not a liability of people getting sick or trawling through nonsense and bad quality products?
- outofpaper 3y agoThis Vox article feels almost as clickbate and turn key as its subject material. It's filled with links upon links, not to sources but to other vox articles and vox search results. It's like reading in a library only to realize, as you go for another book, that you are in a carnival mirror maze!
- layman51 3y agoAgreed. I was surprised to see a link in that article to a long, ranty Reddit post when they refer to what “the rumors on Reddit say.”
- bitwize 3y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39512600 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39512600 In this post I opined that software engineering is akin to chemical engineering: the goal is a process to churn out software at massive scale much like chemical engineers find ways to produce chemicals by the kilolitre. In the software case this comes at the expense of grace, finesse, and craftsmanship, and I suggested another analogy to being a writer vs. a "literature engineer". This... is exactly what I meant by "literature engineering".
- simonw 3y ago"The saddest part about it, though, is that the garbage books don’t actually make that much money either. It’s even possible to lose money generating your low-quality ebook to sell on Kindle for $0.99. The way people make money these days is by teaching students the process of making a garbage ebook. It’s grift and garbage all the way down — and the people who ultimately lose out are the readers and writers who love books."
- silisili 3y agoNot just e-books, garbage print too! Link below. The kid likes brain teasers, so I'll grab a book here and there. The last one I ordered was seemingly AI generated. The wording was off, the answers were either completely incorrect, or theoretically correct but not matching the question or parameters asked. I can't quite remember the last time I became as infuriated at a...book. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0CQQPPQS4 https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0CQQPPQS4
- owlninja 3y agoThis seems like the more lucrative route. As an avid reader I do a bit of research before deciding on a book. I suppose someone had to read it first but a lot of good books seem to bubble up to the top. I would never dig 5 pages deep into Amazon and buy a book with zero reviews based on...what? After raising small kids however, the classics are fun but buying some easy time-filling books or activity books doesn't require as much thought. I do hope that AI can also be used to combat books like the one you linked. Straight garbage looking for a sucker.
- magnetowasright 3y agoOne of the reviews says to look at the sample, but it looks like the sample isn't available any more. Might just be a regional thing that the sample isn't available but maybe they removed it intentionally lol
- plorkyeran 3y agoThe first puzzle from the sample: > A seller has some quantity of floor with him. The seller offered his customer that if he/she buys half of the floor he has, he will give half kg of floor as a discount. The first customer accepted his offer and he purchased half of the floor and got half kg as extra. After selling the floor to the first customer he again makes the same offer for the second customer, and so on. The seller left with no quantity of floor after he made the fifth transaction. The initial quantity of floor the seller had? It's a solvable math puzzle, but has some obvious issues. One of the later puzzles is pretty funny: > There are three people (Deepak, Avinash, Prateek ), one is a robot, one is a missile, one of them is a Gun, the robot can either lie or tell the trust, and the Gun always tells the truth, the missile always lies, and the robot can do both he can either lie or he can tell the truth. > Statements : > Deepak: Prateek is a missile." > Avinash: "Deepak is a Gun." > prateek : "I am the robot." > Find out the Gun, the missile, and the robot? The typos and weird formatting from the original. The final puzzle in the sample is just sort of an incoherent mess: > You have twenty white and thirteen black balls in a bag. You pull out two balls one after another. If the balls are of identical color, you then definitely replace them with a white ball - however, if they're of various colors, you update them with a black ball. Once you are taking out the balls, you do now no longer place them returned back in the bag - so the balls keep reducing. What will be the color of the final ball remaining in the bag?
- fyrepuffs 3y agoNobody at all guessed that this would happen.
- tamimio 3y agoWhat other good alternatives to amazon for publishing books? Preferably not filled with garbage ones.
- nytesky 3y agoI mean Amazon and Hulu are chock full of terrible B VOD movies that never went to theaters.
- Dibby053 3y agoThe web has been filled with garbage books since its inception. Now it's Amazon, before that it was SEO-optimized e-book landing pages that showed up on Google searches for barely related topics. As long as there are people who buy them they'll keep popping up.
- thrownaway561 3y agofrom 6 years ago... it's simple... the booksstore has always been used as a money laundering operation. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/27/fake-books-sold-amazon-money-laundering https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/27/fake-books-sol...
- jhallenworld 3y agoSadly the technology for these scams is also very useful for legitimate new self-published authors. How much gatekeeping do we really want? I would think the review system would weed out the junk. So here is a recent example of modern publishing: I've been reading things on r/hfy.. which I don't think anyone would argue is high quality literature, but the stories are fun and the premiss of the entire genre works as background structure. One of the better stories is "Nature of Predators" by SpacePaladin15. https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/u19xpa/the_nature_of_predators/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/u19xpa/the_nature_of_p... Ok, so the author wants to publish on Amazon, no big deal these days, here it is: https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Predators-Book-One/dp/B0CQ5QNWBV/ https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Predators-Book-One/dp/B0CQ5QNW... (I would argue that the reddit experience is actually better, because there are reader comments after each chapter. Where did the cover art come from? I don't know..) What about the passive income? Well he's making $6K a month on Patreon. Maybe not passive since he's working on the sequel.. Well, how about an audiobook? Well patreon.com/Adastra650 has made it into an excellent audiobook on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm8OjwhOz-FZG_M_A1u9dvNwW4VdUUHM9 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm8OjwhOz-FZG_M_A1u9d... Some of the voices are AI generated, but they are not bad.. it has me curious what software is used. The thumbnails are also AI. All significant books require a page on TV Tropes: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheNatureOfPredators https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheNatureO... Naturally the story has grown out of HFY, has its own subreddit for fans and fanfiction: https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureofPredators/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureofPredators/ Naturally there is a NSFW version: https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureOfPredatorsNSFW/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureOfPredatorsNSFW/ The Silo series (or Wool Omnibus) had similar beginnings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silo_(series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silo_(series)
- pico303 3y agoI took a glance at that “Nature of Predators” book, but couldn’t get past the first sentence. Did the author really mean “sapience,” or “sentience?”
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- protocolture 3y agoThe 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.
- whyenot 3y agoI'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.
- johngossman 3y agoThis is my biggest complaint. I look for CS and history books and get ads for romances. At least I figured that out. It turns out romance books make more money than any other category. Apparently, Amazon's ad inventory is mostly romance.
- bambax 3y agoSponsored 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.
- hnbad 3y agoI remember a time when Amazon was a first class reference example for facetted search. These days I find it hard to set any meaningful filters on most of my searches. Even common ones like color and size are often absent. I guess there is no ROI in helping you find the specific thing you're searching for when you can instead spray and pray with "sponsored results" and keyword stuffing.
- CSMastermind 3y ago> 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.
- ethbr1 3y agoAgreed. 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 Walmart and says "There's a more ethical alternative", Amazon might have a problem. But I assume Amazon retail leadership is self aware they're milking the long tail of historical brand cachet while under-investing in their future, at this point. AWS and maybe some other businesses spin off, adios to the remainder as Sears 2.0.
- BLKNSLVR 3y agoThe 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".
- kredd 3y agoIt 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.
- TechSculptor89 3y agoIt's all business.
- nl 3y agoThe 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.
- herbst 3y agoAliExpress 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.
- SXX 3y agoThis. Subpar products will always be on market. Problem is that Amazon making a lot of money selling trash and everyone okay with this.
- neilv 3y agoEven 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 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.)
- precompute 3y agoFanfiction sites filled with "garbage" are arguably worth more than Amazon's online free-for-all (now with AI!). You know fanfiction sites are great when they train models on the millions of human-written, well-tagged fics
- jamesdhutton 3y agoI 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.
- bambax 3y agoA little OT -- about using AI for writing. I wrote a book in 2021 -- a historical novel (in French) -- that I published on Amazon and that did reasonably well and was even selected as one of the five "Amazon Storyteller" for France that year (it didn't win though). I wrote that book with zero AI, and it was very hard work. It was also not particularly enjoyable, and at times excruciating. Now I'm writing a second one, also a novel, but using AI tools. AIs don't write the book: I discuss scene beats and plot twists with different models. It's mostly moral support -- something an old-fashioned, experienced editor that had infinite time on their hands might have done. (Of course I did try to have models do the writing, but the output is usually very poor. I'm surprised that automated ways to detect AI writing don't work, because humans can tell the difference; why can't machines?) Using AI as a partner/editor transforms the process of writing completely, and makes it actually pleasurable. Now I long for going back to work instead of dreading it.
- dwighttk 3y ago>because humans can tell the difference; why can't machines Because human intelligence is non-computable
- chrisjj 3y agoStopped reading at: "if you know the norms of publishing, you know it’s unethical" Good grief. Should have stopped earlier.
- flumpcakes 3y agoMy 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.
- BigParm 3y agoI 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.