Just when you think it was safe to go back in the water. Sigh.
Spammers and scrapers have a new target ebooks on Amazon. It seems the newest game in town is to scrape a bunch of websites, assemble some (essentially useless) content, package it up in the html format Amazon wants. Then sell it for .99 per download on Kindle.
Consumers pay .99 for an ebook thinking theyre getting something cheap and they do. They get a useless collection of random stuff. Amazon isnt in the business of editing or approving books before they go live as long as they pass the code tests so its very easy to run this scam.
Consumers dont often complain because its .99 and what the heck. The odd bad review gets entered but it turns out a great many people dont read reviews before they plunk down a mere buck for a book of promises.
Given the process is pretty much automated, the scrapers make money on gullible folks. Sooner or later probably later Amazon is going to take steps to protect their brand on this kind of thing. Its one of the reasons you need to go through one of 5-6 companies to get your book into the ibook store Apple wants some eyes on those products before they go live through their store.
So two different approaches to ebooks indeed to combat a growing problem. My book (below is $9.99 ) is now live on Amazon and will be live on Apple and BN (and a few other smaller sales sites) within the next two weeks as the system grinds them into catalogs. For the record, Im using Smashwords to do the heavy lifting for everybody except Amazon I uploaded that one myself.
So check it out when you go to the Kindle store on this link below, there are some rankings breadcrumbs at the bottom of the page check out and see if you can identify the spammer/scraper books in this queue. I have no doubt you can but can the general public.
Murky world indeed.
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