"content farms" and the Kindle Swindle

turningpoint · Apr 12, 2011

I just read an interesting article that really concerns me. The author sees ebooks and as the next frontier for spammers, not to mention theft.
http://www.publishingtrends.com/2011/03/the-kindle-swindle/
I am posting it because I think it's worth discussing.

kaitie · Apr 12, 2011

That's all kinds of terrifying.

Osiander · Apr 12, 2011

What this is going to do is give readers a reason to become more discerning, more quickly.

One of the problems that will feed into this is that not very much back list has been digitised yet. I've been looking for some non fiction on various subjects and the decent books aren't available in Kindle format, so the only options that come up are self published.

veinglory · Apr 12, 2011

There are already all kinds of crap ebooks on clickbank, I suppose they can easily migrate to other platforms

PulpDogg · Apr 12, 2011

Yeah I think this might force Amazon at one point to seriously restructure their whole Kindle Publishing Platform. Lower the royalties, increase the entry barriers, etc pp.

turningpoint · Apr 12, 2011

I guess I am bothered especially by the idea that people are unscrupulous enough to copy and sell other people's work. The true writer could end up unrecognized, unpaid and ignored. Not making a living is one thing, making a living inadvertently for a thief is another.

efkelley · Apr 12, 2011

I think it might be prudent for Amazon et al to require an ISBN. These scammers are relying on single-digit sales with thousands of listings to be profitable at .99c. Tacking on an ISBN invalidates that model, and gives the distributor time to find the violators.

kaitie · Apr 12, 2011

That's a brilliant idea.

defyalllogic · Apr 12, 2011

can I, as a buyer, tell the difference between ebooks with ISBNs and those without to help show that I'm looking at something more legitimate?

(this is upsetting and sadly makes me glad I still never got hip to ebooks even though I really want to)

fireluxlou · Apr 12, 2011

I can spot them a mile off and usually later reviews give this away as a con same as downloading a sample.

efkelley · Apr 12, 2011

defyalllogic said:
can I, as a buyer, tell the difference between ebooks with ISBNs and those without to help show that I'm looking at something more legitimate?

(this is upsetting and sadly makes me glad I still never got hip to ebooks even though I really want to)

Def, they often don't have a sample chapter, and sometimes don't even have a product description. The cover may not even match the genre/title. It might be called 'A Tale of Two Murders' in the Erotica section with a picture of a helicopter.

Also, you can find the ISBN number in the product description. These books will *never* have an ISBN number.

Sheryl Nantus · Apr 12, 2011

TheBigEasy said:
Yeah I think this might force Amazon at one point to seriously restructure their whole Kindle Publishing Platform. Lower the royalties, increase the entry barriers, etc pp.

I'd like to think so but I fear that Amazon's not really in it for anything but the money.

Don't forget that while Amazon may sell books and ebooks, it's not *just* a bookstore. That's just part of their huge overall catalog.

And I can just imagine the screaming on the Kindleboards if anyone dared trying to set limits on who can post what under what conditions...

Alessandra Kelley · Apr 12, 2011

efkelley's idea of requiring ISBNs on Kindle books sounds like a good one, but doesn't that raise the price to prospective authors a lot? Or would that be part of slowing down the spammers?

Does this have anything to do with weird search results on alibris? Last time I searched "muppets", a very large number of weird, content-farm-sounding books I'd never heard of with very high prices kept showing up. Or is that totally irrelevant to this?

movieman · Apr 12, 2011

Alessandra Kelley said:
efkelley's idea of requiring ISBNs on Kindle books sounds like a good one, but doesn't that raise the price to prospective authors a lot?

AFAIR ISBNs only cost a few dollars in America, and they're free here in Canada. I don't know about other countries.

izanobu · Apr 13, 2011

Amazon has already cracked down on people posting out of copyright books without serious annotations or some other addition (and they are vetting formatting on those as well apparently). They did this to stem the flood of people putting up things like the Bible and other pub domain works.

shaldna · Apr 13, 2011

There are programmes that you can use to search for plagiarised text. You copy your text into it, and it scours for it. A simple step on amazons side like that would flag up any potential theft issues which would need to be looked into further.

"content farms" and the Kindle Swindle

turningpoint

kaitie

With great power comes

Osiander

veinglory

volitare nequeo

PulpDogg

I should be writing

turningpoint

efkelley

ow

kaitie

With great power comes

defyalllogic

i'm a girl. (i have tendonitis)

fireluxlou

efkelley

ow

Sheryl Nantus

Holding out for a Superhero...

Alessandra Kelley

Sophipygian

movieman

izanobu

...

shaldna

The cake is a lie. But still cake.