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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 p

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.

morkalork 3y ago
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/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 ago
  I 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 ago
  Lol, even the author's image is AI generated. The text screams ChatGPT. Amazon has given up on AI.
- paledot 3y ago
  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.
janice1999 3y ago
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-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
  [deleted]
- bambax 3y ago
  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.
  - mkl 3y ago
    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/ https://thebookslist.com/most-prolific-authors/
    - bambax 3y ago
      > 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 year, every single year of that period. I don't think that's possible for just one man. But ghostwriting is as old as writing.
      - mkl 3y ago
        At 40 hours per week that's only ≈770 words per hour on average, which seems achievable.
insane_dreamer 3y ago
> 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
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
  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
  - insane_dreamer 3y ago
    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.
    - dakial1 3y ago
      This. executives are very smart and know exactly how to their incentives work. The shareholders are the ones not paying attention.
pquki4 3y ago
Amazon is not incentivized to do so for as long as they maintain a monopoly in the book market, just like they are not putting enough effort in removing knock off products.
beauzero 3y ago
Ugh Whisper. On Audible I used to browse the free sci fi. Found James S. A. Corey, etc. there and ended up spending a lot...and I mean a lot of money buying authors series that I had never heard of. Now all the Whisper read...stuff crowds everything out. I don't even bother anymore and look elsewhere for books, use podcasts, listen to long youtube lectures while on the tractor, doing fence, clearing land on the weekends and during my commute.
chrisjj 3y ago
> The focus of the article is on charlatans selling courses ... with no evidence of charlatanism, note.

morkalork 3y ago

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/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 ago
I 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 ago
Lol, even the author's image is AI generated. The text screams ChatGPT. Amazon has given up on AI.
paledot 3y ago
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.

janice1999 3y ago

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-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
[deleted]
bambax 3y ago
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.
- mkl 3y ago
  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/ https://thebookslist.com/most-prolific-authors/
  - bambax 3y ago
    > 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 year, every single year of that period. I don't think that's possible for just one man. But ghostwriting is as old as writing.
    - mkl 3y ago
      At 40 hours per week that's only ≈770 words per hour on average, which seems achievable.

insane_dreamer 3y ago

> 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

IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
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
- insane_dreamer 3y ago
  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.
  - dakial1 3y ago
    This. executives are very smart and know exactly how to their incentives work. The shareholders are the ones not paying attention.

pquki4 3y ago

Amazon is not incentivized to do so for as long as they maintain a monopoly in the book market, just like they are not putting enough effort in removing knock off products.

beauzero 3y ago

Ugh Whisper. On Audible I used to browse the free sci fi. Found James S. A. Corey, etc. there and ended up spending a lot...and I mean a lot of money buying authors series that I had never heard of. Now all the Whisper read...stuff crowds everything out. I don't even bother anymore and look elsewhere for books, use podcasts, listen to long youtube lectures while on the tractor, doing fence, clearing land on the weekends and during my commute.

chrisjj 3y ago

> The focus of the article is on charlatans selling courses ... with no evidence of charlatanism, note.