More Troubling Amazon News

While still grappling with questions about Amazon’s pricing practices, today I came across even more troubling information about how the massive bookseller and epublisher is enabling publishing “knockoffs.”

It’s a fascinating and troubling story about “authors” who use Amazon’s CreateSpace, which is the equivalent of an e-book publishing house, to create “books” with titles that may be just a word or two different from the titles of mega-best-sellers (such as “I Am the Girl with the Dragon Tatoo”).

The books are often credited to authors whose names are remarkably similar to the authors of the originals. And the books are listed on Amazon’s site with descriptions that are sometimes word for word as the best-sellers.

Take a look at this story from Stephen Gandel on the CNN/Fortune website.

And be careful what you search for if you’re not quite sure of the title of the book your neighbor told you was the best read of the year.

 

April 16, 2012

Blog Categories

Contact

Need help with your article or advertisement? Want someone to give your book a final look? Drop us a line or give us a call—we’d love to have a word with you.

Testimonials

I had a book manuscript that had a thorough edit by a copy editor, but there were many changes made and I wanted another set of eyes to look at  it carefully. So I hired Tammy Ditmore to do a “fina… Read more
Tim Stanley, 2 Timothy Publishing

You May Also Like…

How Do You Write an Editor?

You’ve finished your book / article / story, and you’re ready to hire an editor. You search the internet, find the...

A Personal History of Persistence

I don’t write book reviews often for this space, but this one is 20 years in the making, so it seems worthwhile....

0 Comments