spam books need deletion?

[Alessandra]

I stumbled across this "book" by accident.

I say "book" with quotes because it's clearly not what the title implies, "Novels by Karin Fossum (with a list of titles)", but rather one of those photocopied-an-article-out-of-Wikipedia type scams meant to fraudulently get money out of people who mistakenly think they are getting anthologies.

Its description does admit it's "nonfiction commentary," (which I view as a covering-their-posteriors disclaimer) and rather alarmingly says that buying this book gives you a "free" "trial" membership in their "book club" which sounds disturbingly like a pirate site.

Of the handful of people who listed this book, the majority have set their profiles to "private," so I have no way of knowing who they are or what they have done onsite.

This "book" screams spam to me. It violates the spirit of what a book should be. It is a cheap printout of readily-available public information with a wildly misleading title designed to confuse potential buyers.

GoodReads ought not to let itself be used by hucksters and scam artists.

Can this "book" be deleted from the database?

[Paula]

There have been lots of discussions about these type of books, the official line is that they stay.

If you do a search in the Librarian's Group on Books LLC then you will find the discussions

[Shay]

Alessandra wrote: "I stumbled across this "book" by accident.

I say "book" with quotes because it's clearly not what the title implies, "Novels by Karin Fossum (with a list of titles)", but rather one of those pho..."

At the very end of the description, it has a web address. I'm pretty sure that we can delete any information on how to purchase a book from the description.