[marshray]

> My experience inflicted stupidity.

We've all been there.

> I find it nice that they linked to the original book. For every x earned let the original author earn many times more. > It's probably a better deal than the author got from their legal publisher.

These two statements sound contradictory to me.

> And who's fault is that? Google? Or this little slop maker that I'm (again stupidly) assuming is not a SEO hacker.

Why not both? I think there's plenty of blame to go around.

Also, the publisher who presumably convinced the author that it would be a good idea to assign them exclusive rights. The affiliate link the blog post refers to as "the author's own" actually belongs to the publisher.

[scotty79]

> These two statements sound contradictory to me.

How so?

[marshray]

Well, it turned out the affiliate code linked as "the author's" actually belongs to the publisher anyway.

[scotty79]

Let's say author gets 40% of each sale and the publisher gets 60%. If a random dude brings a client through 'illegal' affiliate link that pays 2% of the item price. Then yes, he earns 2% without being blessed by the author. But the author earns 20x as much on that sale. While he earns only 2/3 of what publisher does on this sale. So this random dude with his dirty tactics brings the author many times better deal than publisher did.

All numbers made up. I don't have any idea what they might actually be. I'm just presenting my logic with an example, in service of hopefully better understanding.