Amazon's Knock Off Problem

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Once Amazon goes completely subscription based and no books are actually bought, these titles should go away, although I'm not a member of the KDP so I can't say how the the beta test is going, is it mostly filled with garbage like this?

Your reign of terror is never going to be implemented. The inconvenience of knock-off books is insignificant compared to the knightmare of your book commissar telling us what books we can read.

[morriss003]

Any day now, I am expecting to see a knockoff entitled, Surviving the Frog.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Once Amazon goes completely subscription based and no books are actually bought, these titles should go away, although I'm not a member of the KDP so I can't say how the the beta test is going, is it mostly filled with garbage like this?

No. The KDP slushpile is mostly filled with repetitively-themed badly-written barely-coherent ungrammatical and unimaginative hard-core porn. Also weirdo conspiracy/theology tracts, but not nearly in the same numbers as the porn, most days.

[Barty]

I have an idea for my first book:

twilight: breaking bad.

Yeah, get two fan bases in one!

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by morriss003

Any day now, I am expecting to see a knockoff entitled, Surviving the Frog.

That might be something I would try just to see what it is about...

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

There are multiple examples of multiple books with the exact same title.

This made me wonder what is the most common book title in English.

Usually I can find answers to such questions on Google, but using search terms like:

most common book title

I am coming up blank.

Trying to do just a bit of such research on my own, I went to worldcat.com and tried Assassin as a title. Turns out that the number of books titled The Assassin and the number simply titled Assassin is roughly equal, and, in both cases, more than I cared to take the time to count. Certainly there are dozens of each.

[xg4bx]

Originally Posted by Barty

I have an idea for my first book:

twilight: breaking bad.

Yeah, get two fan bases in one!

make the meth dealing vampires part of an outlaw biker gang and i'm sold.

[GA Russell]

I remember back in the 60s seeing Mel Torme on television (on a game show, as I recall). He mentioned that he was writing a book, but when the host asked its title, Mel refused to say, noting that it couldn't be copyrighted, and he didn't want to give away any secrets.

As it turned out, the book was called Wynner.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

Your reign of terror is never going to be implemented. The inconvenience of knock-off books is insignificant compared to the knightmare of your book commissar telling us what books we can read.

It's a bit more of an inconvenience, I can't even bother myself to wade through the titles at Amazon because I know most of them are garbage such as this thread refers to.

This is no nightmare, this is a dream. Revenue sharing determined by length of time spent reading. It is expected to reduce the garbage by upwards of 75%. Over time we think the garbage merchants will move on to other outlets if any still exist, which they might not.

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

It's a bit more of an inconvenience, I can't even bother myself to wade through the titles at Amazon because I know most of them are garbage such as this thread refers to.

False. Most of them are NOT knockoffs. I did a search in the Amazon Kindle Store looking for Twilight. It wasn't until result #77 that I got to anything that looked like a knockoff. The other results were either Twilight books, books about the Twilight books, books about the Twilight movies, or clearly unrelated books with the same title. It wasn't until result #77 that I got a result that has the word "Twilight" in the title. It was "Twilight Fulfilled", and from what I could read from the blurb, it did involve a vampire. But even there, the name is similar, but not identical, and there is no attempt to fool a purchaser my making up a pen name similar to the author of the more well-known book. And I had to spend some time searching to find even that. If I was looking to buy Twilight (I'm not, but it is a book that many people would search for) I wouldn't have searched that far, link #1 on the first page would have been what I was looking for.

This is no nightmare, this is a dream. Revenue sharing determined by length of time spent reading. It is expected to reduce the garbage by upwards of 75%. Over time we think the garbage merchants will move on to other outlets if any still exist, which they might not.

What you propose is indeed a nightmare. "It is expected?" By whom is this expected? If you mean that YOU expect this, then say so. What you are proposing is to take from readers the right to make their own book choices and instead to hand that power over to some book commissar who will decide which books and which authors are rewarded. That is a nightmare. It wouldn't reduce crap, it would guarantee crap. You would only have what the book commissar wanted you to have. "Why We Love the Book Commissar" would be rewarded richly, but "We Don't Need No Stinkin' Book Commissar" wouldn't get past the book commissar. The reader decides what books are worthwhile, not some dictator.

That a book might not be the book you are looking for is a small price to pay for the right to choose the books you want to read. One person might say a book is crap, while another person says that the book is fantastic. It's up to the reader to make that decision. I have no interest in reading Twilight, but I will make that decision for myself instead of having a book commissar decide it for me.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

False. Most of them are NOT knockoffs. I did a search in the Amazon Kindle Store looking for Twilight. It wasn't until result #77 that I got to anything that looked like a knockoff.

My search produced different results.

Numbers 6, 7, 12, 14, 21

Several parodies beyond that. Analysis and cookbooks too.

Even choosing "Twilight Series" produced non-Twilight titles.

All it takes though is to check for Stephenie Myer as author.

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by Fbone

My search produced different results.

Numbers 6, 7, 12, 14, 21

Several parodies beyond that. Analysis and cookbooks too.

Even choosing "Twilight Series" produced non-Twilight titles.

All it takes though is to check for Stephenie Myer as author.

#6 is clearly a book about the Twilight series, and not a Twilight book. It's a short article of someone grumbling about the Twilight books.

#7 makes no attempt to fool the reader into thinking it is one of Meyer's books, the cover doesn't look like hers, and the content, while rather gruesome, isn't similar.

#12 Is a book about the Twilight series. Taking even a moment to glace at the blurb tells you what the book is.

#14 I did miss this one, it is a vampire book with a similar name, but there is no attempt to fool the reader with a similar pen name. If the book was called "Twilight" by Stephanie Mayor, then it would be a real knock off.

#21 does have the same name, but the cover looks nothing like the Twilight books, the author's name is not similar, and the plot isn't similar, it's a story about shapeshifters, not vampires.

My point is that you're not drowning in knockoffs. If you type in Twilight, the very first result is the book you're probably looking for.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

What you are proposing is to take from readers the right to make their own book choices and instead to hand that power over to some book commissar who will decide which books and which authors are rewarded.

I am not sure where this whole book commissar idea came from, but certainly not from me.

My issue isn't really with the knockoffs, their titles are usually funny. I like to browse the independent sections of most bookstores and Amazon's is filled with all sorts of garbage. Certainly Amazon has been and continues to work on reducing the amount of garbage, the signal to noise ratio and all that. I just think that taking away the option for the garbage purveyors to make any money would disincentive them to produce garbage in the first place.

The garbage could still be uploaded and downloaded of course, freedom of speech and all that, but if someone downloads two texts, and finds one of them to be garbage, only spending a minute or two reading it, while spending a few hours reading the other one, it is quite obvious which creator should be compensated.

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

I am not sure where this whole book commissar idea came from, but certainly not from me.

My issue isn't really with the knockoffs, their titles are usually funny. I like to browse the independent sections of most bookstores and Amazon's is filled with all sorts of garbage. Certainly Amazon has been and continues to work on reducing the amount of garbage, the signal to noise ratio and all that. I just think that taking away the option for the garbage purveyors to make any money would disincentive them to produce garbage in the first place.

The garbage could still be uploaded and downloaded of course, freedom of speech and all that, but if someone downloads two texts, and finds one of them to be garbage, only spending a minute or two reading it, while spending a few hours reading the other one, it is quite obvious which creator should be compensated.

You didn't use the term "book commissar", but that is exactly what you propose. Right now, readers determine which authors get compensated by buying the books. Readers determine what is trash and what is treasure. You propose taking that out of their hands, and putting the decision for who gets compensated in someone else's hands. You propose e-readers that spy on what and when we read to determine who gets paid. The book commissar not only determines who gets paid, but how much they get paid. You have proposed forbidding authors from selling their work.

What possible difference does it make how much time someone spent reading a book. If you have two books of equal length, and someone devours a book in two hours, while someone else slogs though a book in 8 hours, how can the book commissar tell which book the reader valued more? Did the reader read so fast because they enjoyed it so much, or did they just skim through it? The book commissar can't tell this. The reader knows exactly how they value the book.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

I wonder whether the reason this isn't a problem with B&N as well is simply because B&N doesn't have a large enough share of the audience to make it worth the knockoff artist's tiime to post there too. Or do B&N and Kobo have more editorial say over what's released through their own self-publishing arms?

Publishing at B&N is a similar process to that of Amazon--there's very little oversight at either. I'm guessing if it is less common it's due to less traffic at B&N (most of us sell less than half at B&N compared to Amazon). The process is just as easy at all places I upload. Different formatting is required, so that is an "extra" step to get it onto other retailers. If authors choose to go into Amazon exclusive program (more advertising ops are said to occur for those in the select program) they stand to sell even more copies on Amazon.

Or it could be that authors believe there are more Kindles out there than Nooks/kobos/etc.