The new problem of best-selling books on Amazon is a nightmare for authors: counterfeit books

If you want to publish and sell a book online, Amazon is an absolute reference. That has its advantages—many people search and buy there—and also some big drawbacks. One of them has just been reported by a journalist named Tae Kim, who has just published a new book there and has found an unpleasant surprise.

counterfeit books. The problem of counterfeit products is a nightmare in industries such as fashion and electronics, but now it is also affecting the publishing business. Tell that to Tae Kim, who recently published an essay about the company NVIDIA and have you seen how on Amazon There is not only his book, but also several fake copies that imitate the design of its cover and that in some cases impersonate his identity.

In the image, the original book (the one on the upper left) competes with fake books with identical titles that even impersonate the identity of the original author, Tae Kim.

Terrible imitations. These counterfeit books take advantage of the popularity of a certain book to try to obtain sales. They use cover designs very similar to the original and even go so far as to use the author’s own name on that cover, although the names of the theoretical authors are different. In the image you can see how there is one called “Tae Kim Biography” by “EchoVerse Books” which is not an authorized biography by any means. The other two that appear in the image with the same title as the original are not real books either.

And the real author is the one who receives the criticism. But there is also another problem: there are readers who buy these counterfeit books and realize that they are terrible. The bad thing is that when they add the review they do not necessarily do so on the books they have purchased, but on the original books, which harms the legitimate author of the work and his book.

Books with AI. As Tae Kim further explained, one of the reviews he saw of his book highlighted how it was “the worst book he had read in 30 years.” The reader indicated how it appeared to be written by ChatGPT, which was likely the case for the fake book that user purchased. Amazon has been trying to prevent the avalanche of books written by an AI for some time, but this is an added problem.

literary frauds. This type of phenomenon has been happening for a long time. Another author named Jane Friedman discovered in 2023 how Amazon had half a dozen fake books available that used her name and were likely full of trash or AI-generated content. Neither Amazon nor the literary review platform Goodreads removed these fake books. until his complaint went viral.

The other fakes. The problem is even older: at Xataka we talked about it already in 2022, although at that time those fake copies were somewhat different. The counterfeiters published slightly different versions of the book, with poorer quality materials, poorer bindings, poorer printing quality and even errors in the text, but these texts were not generated by AI.

The name as a registered trademark. Friedman came up with an idea to minimize this impersonation: apply for a trademark registration of his name. With this he could defend in court those demands for the removal of false books that impersonate his identity. Even so, the problem for Amazon is still there, and the platform should have mechanisms to avoid this type of problem.

What Amazon says. At Xataka we have contacted Amazon to obtain more details about the problem and we will update the news if we receive them. In Friedman’s case, Quartz collected the comments of Ashley Vanicek, a spokesperson for Amazon, who in a statement indicated that “we gladly accept the comments of the authors and work directly with them to resolve any problems they raise and, when we have made a mistake, we correct it. We invest “very much to provide a reliable shopping experience and protect customers and authors from misuse of our service.”

Image | Veroniki Thetis Chelioti

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