This is a must read article for both Indie authors and readers alike.
Why? Because these scammers are gaming the Amazon ranking system, which hurts authors. But by clogging up the Top 100 lists with bullshit books, they’re also:
a) tricking readers into wasting their money or
b) making it even harder for readers to find good books to read.
If you have not been a victim of one of these scammers, you’re lucky. I bought what I thought was a classic Alfred Bester sci-fi novel only to discover it was a ‘study guide’ masquerading as the actual book. I was…not pleased. Believe me when I say these bastards are getting away with small scale fraud a million times a day!
Please read the article, and if you’re convinced this is a bad thing, make a noise because it’s time the silent majority sent a message to Amazon that this is not good enough!
https://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2016/04/15/ku-scammers-attack-amazons-free-ebook-charts/
This was brought to you as a community service announcement by Meeka’s Mind, where all things are sporadic.
Meeka's Mind 
April 18th, 2016 at 10:19 pm
George is right. In all things social media there seems to be a great deal of smoke and mirrors. People can easily fake a following and “support”. And from there it can snowball- no matter how rubbish something/someone might be.
That’s basically what Askthebigot was doing with all the fake comments on her site. A single post with 700 comments made The World (including Australian tv producers) believe she had an enormous readership and following.
A friend of mine who has a social media company tells me the rule now is to increase stats. The proportion of fakery doesn’t really matter because that’s notoriously difficult to verify- and there are a whole lot of credulous people out there.
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April 18th, 2016 at 11:12 pm
I sort of new some of that, but not. Part of me is still incredibly naive and believes the world is made up of nice people who basically do the right thing.
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April 17th, 2016 at 12:34 am
OMG! I had not idea that this was going on.
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April 17th, 2016 at 10:10 am
Me neither. The sad part is, if they can game the system so well and so easily, the whole concept of marketing becomes a pointless game too.
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April 16th, 2016 at 10:48 pm
I don’t really understand how all that works, but it’s so difficult as it is to get eyes on one’s book. Scammers like that just sour the experience even more.
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April 16th, 2016 at 11:17 pm
Yup. To them it’s all about the dollar.
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April 16th, 2016 at 6:51 pm
Unfortunately, we have the same thing in almost anything web related. It’s the same in the app scene.
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April 16th, 2016 at 9:22 pm
I’m pragmatic enough to know that these creeps exist in the real world too, but it seems like there are so many more of them online. 😦 They really are climbing out of the woodwork…like cockroaches.
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