Wednesday, February 6, 2019

Amazon and Fake Books and Filtered Reviews

Dave Mark (tweet):

The book had the same title, same author, and a similar cover. But it was not printed by No Starch Press and, presumably, none of the money will make its way to No Starch or the author.

[…]

Once they had the fake book in hand, they could print a fake and sell it, or add the fake PDF to a torrent web site. Happened to me with every book I ever wrote.

But this particular fake appears to be surfaced by Amazon, the number one bookseller in the world.

John Gordon:

Amazon reviews have long been helpful to me, and were once a big part of Amazon’s value proposition.

That is no longer true. Amazon is filtering out negative reviews.

See also: Reddit.

Previously:

Update (2019-02-20): Sean Gallagher (Hacker News):

Bill Pollock, the founder of the tech how-to book publisher No Starch Press, called out Amazon on February 13 for selling what he says are counterfeit copies of his company’s book, The Art of Assembly Language—copies that Amazon apparently printed.

3 Comments RSS · Twitter

Willful infringement of Copyright. Isn't the penalty up to $150,000 per act?

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