Weird author with loads of books

[Anna]

GR: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline...

Apparently "Steve MCurry" has been very busy and he's been working with some very famous authors.

[Val]

It looks as though they are collections of photographs by country.

[Anna]

Among the illustrators are "authors" whose names are those of actual authors with the letter d added to the end of their surname. A bunch of actual authors have also been added as illustrators.

Examples of "authors/illustrators":
J.D. Salingerd
Danielle Steeld
David Foster Wallaced
James Pattersond
Liane Moriartyd
J.K. Rowlingd
Elena Ferranted
Jin Yongd
Alice Hoffmand
Diane Williamsd

Weirdly Steve MCurry isn't Steve McCurryd.

If these are in fact actual books, their data on Amazon is very wrong. It looks like either some test data got loose or someone's been having lots of fun.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

amazon_kcw at its best.

[Anna]

The author and books have been deleted from Amazon, so I deleted the books from GR as well. Will all those empty author profiles be deleted by a cleanup script?

[Anna]

These books are back, this time the author is "Anzel Adams". Once again the illustrators have some very famous names among them, some with the extra d. Two of the books have reviews, but I'm going to delete the rest.

edit: Looks like these are in fact older than the other ones. I wonder how many sets of these there are...

[Lobstergirl]

Oh God. I came across these several weeks ago. I think what's happening here is some faker is trying to capitalize on people thinking they're buying a book by James Patterson or J.K. Rowling and using one-click to buy and being scammed.

It's probably not even Steve McCurry. It's probably someone in Ukraine, Russia, or Nigeria. Or a bot. I wonder if these books even exist.

Don't drink and one-click.

[Anna]

It's obviously not Steve McCurry or Ansel Adams. I guess they exist, since a few people have reviewed them, both here and on Amazon. Apparently they contain just a few photos, nothing else. They disappear from Amazon fairly quickly, though.

But how are these finding their way onto Amazon? Can anyone just publish whatever they want without anyone checking it first?

[Lobstergirl]

Anna wrote: "But how are these finding their way onto Amazon? Can anyone just publish whatever they want without anyone checking it first? "

Yes.

[Lobstergirl]

Well GR has deleted all the authors linked to in this thread, but it seems like these were fake books trying to capitalize on the real Steve McCurry who according to his profile is a well known and legit photographer. I'm going to guess either the books didn't even exist, or someone slapped some reproductions of the real McCurry's photos into a book, obviously violating copyright, and sold some.

[Anna]

Wow, I had no idea it's that easy. Amazon must be full of not-really-a-books.

I deleted the fake authors I listed earlier. There were others but I can't remember them since I didn't list them here.

I left the two "Anzel Adams" books that have reviews, but if they're fakes shouldn't they be deleted anyway?

I wonder if these Photo Collections by David Foster are the same deal. "David Foster Wallaced" was a really popular fake author on the "Steve MCurry" books, or they could be trying to point to David William Foster. On Amazon the author isn't even capitalized and the publishing date is around the same time as the others.