[Beldin]

Nevertheless, spam ebooks do deserve a separate category. There is an actual industry around spam ebooks that offers aspiring fraudsters the tools to quickly cobble together junk with enough stolen content that readers are getting their $0.99 worth. (That latter part helps raise the bar against refund requests.) Moreover, this industry has developed tools and mechanisms to SEO and spam your fraudulent book. Why launch it as ine book, instead of 20 by 20 different authors, with slight variations on the title?

Some of these tricks may be used for physical products as well, but at least they need to deliver a physical product. In the case of spam ebooks, this pipeline takes care of everything. You click around for a few hours, launch the software: bam, 20 junk books with just enough content to not warrant refunds and SEO'd titles to get at least a few dozen sales.

I looked into this well over a decade ago; back then, you could buy a set of DVDs that would teach (and, perhaps, assist) you in perpetrating this. I get the appeal: back then a popular category was tax tip books. Scrape some tips from here and there, slap on a dozen titles and author names, and sell for low enough that people don't mind taking a chance on your crap. Pity Amazon still hasn't made any successful steps against this.

[SXX]

Dont you think problem with spam books is that someone actually buys them?

Without enough demand no one would do it.

[jajko]

I don't get it, who buys them? My time is so precious (raising 2 small kids now) that I do quite a bit of research before committing so much of my time to it. There are literally millions of books out there.

Even without kids, life is just so wonderful and intense to actually experience, stuff I pick up for just sitting and reading better have amazing reviews by many thousands. Yes, I won't support much some new starting author this way (but then if he wins say Hugo it gets on my list) but my time and well being is simply higher priority for me.

[SXX]

Most likely same people who buy random trash because it's cheap and "FREE DELIVERY WITH PRIME". People really need to be educated not to spend money on trash.

[Beldin]

If you can get a copy of "100 money-saving tax tips" for $1.99, and the preview already sounds promising, wouldn't you? Even one good tip would easily save you the price of the book.

(Also: to me, blaming demand is a bit victim blaming - these scams are deliberately set up to entice as many readers as possible.)

[SXX]

I mean if a person buys one such book for $1.99, not refunds it and afterwards he continue to buy same low-quality books then might be it wasn't such a bad deal for them? Might be they actually think they extracted enough value from it?

How it's different than any other low-quality literature which was always in abundance on the market? Except before copywriting cost $500 and now generated one cost $20 to produce.

Who should be ultimate censor of what books must be released an what books shouldn't?

PS: Same way some people love to buy cheap trash from AliExpress for $1.99 and at least generated books dont create actual e-waste, CO2 footprint and other pollution. And Amazon is now full with trash from AliExpress just 2x more expensive.

[Beldin]

> How it's different...

"They" use software to create many slightly tweaked copies under seemingly different author names. So the low effort of one cobbled together book takes the space of 20 or 30 books. I.e. anyone not playing this game is quickly drowned out by the ones who do.

> Who should be ultimate censor of what books must be released an what books shouldn't?

The issue isn't censorship - or actually, it kind of is, but then by the fraudsters "censoring" non-fraudster books by swamping the market.