A Flood of Bad eBooks on Amazon

[[deleted user]]

I thought hard about the implications of what I am about to say and I wasn't sure if I would open up for myself a whole world of trouble, but I feel this has to be said.

The other day when I was doing a search test on Amazon for my latest children's book to see how easy it was to find, I came across (not for the first time) a series of books by an "Author" who goes by a business name rather than a real name. I won't reveal the full name, but it is "__ Publishing" with an initial or acronym preceding "Publishing".

I checked out some of their books and without exception they are very similar. I went further and looked at samples and it became clear that this "author" was not interested in producing quality publications, but rather, flooding Amazon with a range of "books" in every genre of children's books so that there books were well represented. Now, whilst I applaud anyone who can produce 71 books (yes you read it right), in this case, the books are poor quality, with pictures clearly ripped from the Internet, with next to zero concern for quality (with the exception of some of the covers) or even with matching pictures to the correct words or even using correct spelling or grammar even on the covers.

This is only one such person of perhaps thousands of authors who seem to believe that by flooding the market with tens and sometimes hundreds of 99 cent books, that by virtue of the fact of these book's existence, they would make sales. It must be working, because in this case, the books were above my own in just about every search result, yet (and I say this with a certain trepidation) nowhere near the quality of my own books.

I spend many many hours, days and weeks producing my work. I revise and re-write and spend a great deal of time and go to considerable effort guaranteeing my work is my own work, producing all my own illustrations (mainly composites) and do everything I can to avoid breaching copyright, even applying for written permission to use images I did not produce myself.

Yet here is an individual who seems to be blatantly disregarding every protocol of publication, even writing their own positive reviews under pseudonyms (note I am speculating here and have no real evidence only suspicion based on my reading of the reviews and the similarities in content, grammar etc.). The only real reviews I read had given the author 1 star, which is generous in my view.

I understand it is a market driven capitalist company, but I sometimes wonder if Amazon is doing enough to root out these "publishers" and "authors" who are operating anonymously (try tracing them and you will not find out anything about them, nor follow any links to author websites).

All my work is my own. All the reviews I receive are legit, yet it appears that the general rule is, the more 99 cent books you produce, the more likely it is you will achieve some success. I read one reader's comment that said, "well, you get what you pay for" and while that is true, many of us are forced to lower our prices, because it is impossible to compete with the vast range of truly appalling books flooding the market and keeping real authors' books from being noticed.

A photo of an ant ripped illegally from another website, with the word "Ant" written beneath it in standard font, does not a Children's book make.

I want to know how many of you have come across this and how pervasive this problem is.

[Mariana]

Wow, Paul. Very interesting. I am going to do my own research, but sadly this pseudo authors make it difficult for all of us that want to produce good quality work and live from our art and craft.And books like the ones you describe give a bad reputation to all self-published books, that really worries me since I'm self-published. But only 'til costumers start complaining Amazon will do their job and at least set some standards to their kindle books. They should have people reading the material that gets to them and scan it for quality. I just hope that costumers realize that type of poorly written, low quality books do not represent all of us new self-published authors!

[Chandler]

Paul, I also have been very frustrated about these types of books. If I lower my price with my Publisher, then I get no royalties or they are drastically reduced. I kept thinking... How can these other Authors produce such inexpensive books! There's just no way I can compete with them. I'm still thinking though that my Publisher's printing services are terribly expensive! Some how there's got to be a happy medium for me.

[Ronnie]

I can tell you from a forum I frequent that it's very popular to get non English speakers and pay them very little to create the books for you. You're then sadly left with grammatically impossible to read books with images stolen from all over the web. The huge issue people have with this, is if just one of those images belong to Getti Images.

I've seen courses that promote this sort of nonsense. If this book is on Amazon I suggest you contact their help center and report the author and the books. They have no place amongst reputable books or those genuinely trying to create decent books.

Ronnie.

[[deleted user]]

Thanks all for your interest and comments. I read them all. :)