"Fake" books on Amazon UK

[dadioflex]

Originally Posted by Belfaborac

I had a quick look at some of the product descriptions and they all stated: "This book consists of articles from Wikia" or "This book consists of articles from Wikia or other free sources online". Sounds pretty clear to me.

In large part that's what made me lose interest. They are covering themselves.

But if I search for "balverine" (a creature from the game Fable) on amazon.co.uk one of these books is about the fourth or fifth entry - fair enough, it's not a popular term. If I search for "balverine" on amazon.com there are none of these scraped books. So, the .com is doing something the .co.uk isn't - and that's what still kinda ticks me off.

A search for "halo guide" has one on the second page of results, but the description is nonsense and it's priced at £14.50 for a 40 page book. I don't expect many people to buy these, and if they do presumably they can return them under Amazon's typical returns policy.

This one even got a four star review from a confused parent:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Minute-A...467189&sr=1-39

Or how about this review from a granny:

"The book was fine though a little slim for the money. My grandson thought it okay and Amazon was the only place I could get it." - ten quid for a forty page book scraped off a Spyro the Dragon wiki.

It's a bit like spam - it doesn't take many idiots to buy these for it to be profitable for the companies to do it. I simply think amazon.co.uk should be doing more about it - I've seen independent authors complain about the difficulties associated with adhering to amazon's terms and conditions, yet companies like this have no trouble getting crap like this listed? Jeeze.

This all relates back to the ebook bubble we were discussing a few weeks back.

Anyway, going to stop thinking about it, because it's annoying me.

[HarryT]

As someone who creates public domain ebooks for fun, I stopped worrying about "abusers" a long time ago. If I spend two months producing a nice ebook and give it away for free, and some low-life decides to sell it to make a fast buck on Amazon, I might be a tad irritated, but I can't have it both ways: the public domain means "free do to whatever you want with it", including selling it.

[vxf]

Originally Posted by dadioflex

In large part that's what made me lose interest. They are covering themselves.

But if I search for "balverine" (a creature from the game Fable) on amazon.co.uk one of these books is about the fourth or fifth entry - fair enough, it's not a popular term. If I search for "balverine" on amazon.com there are none of these scraped books. So, the .com is doing something the .co.uk isn't - and that's what still kinda ticks me off.

A search for "halo guide" has one on the second page of results, but the description is nonsense and it's priced at £14.50 for a 40 page book. I don't expect many people to buy these, and if they do presumably they can return them under Amazon's typical returns policy.

This one even got a four star review from a confused parent:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Minute-A...467189&sr=1-39

Or how about this review from a granny:

"The book was fine though a little slim for the money. My grandson thought it okay and Amazon was the only place I could get it." - ten quid for a forty page book scraped off a Spyro the Dragon wiki.

It's a bit like spam - it doesn't take many idiots to buy these for it to be profitable for the companies to do it. I simply think amazon.co.uk should be doing more about it - I've seen independent authors complain about the difficulties associated with adhering to amazon's terms and conditions, yet companies like this have no trouble getting crap like this listed? Jeeze.

This all relates back to the ebook bubble we were discussing a few weeks back.

Anyway, going to stop thinking about it, because it's annoying me.

I still don't see your point. All the ones I looked at say clearly:
"This book consists of articles from Wikia or other free sources online."
Including the Halo guide you mentioned.

If some of then do not, then you have a case.
Otherwise... why impede free commerce? If someone think it is convenient for them to have webpages printed and packaged and is willing to pay for it... so be it.

Now, if some of those descriptions do not make it clear, then I think you are correct.

[Giggleton]

I would argue that the wikipedias TOS is meaningless legalese and that the material in question being sold on Amazon is protected by copyright. And then I would argue that copyright itself is meaningless legalese. And then I would order a pizza.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by dadioflex

But if I search for "balverine" (a creature from the game Fable) on amazon.co.uk one of these books is about the fourth or fifth entry - fair enough, it's not a popular term. If I search for "balverine" on amazon.com there are none of these scraped books. So, the .com is doing something the .co.uk isn't - and that's what still kinda ticks me off.

At a guess, the "creators" of those books just choose not to sell them outside the UK. Maybe they are worried about interference from the owners of the characters in the games, or maybe just being feedback bombed if the website owners stirred their regular users up enough. Either way I doubt it will be Amazon's decision.