Can't find a list of Amazon self published authors.

[ryanbhuvam]

After reading about the 'Phillipines', ghostwriters and SPAs earning thousands each year for doing not very much i.e. hoodwinking the readers, I've decided to only purchase books that have had a hard back release. Amazon has set up a way for SPAs to publish paperbacks so even using paperbacks as a filter is no longer viable. I apologize to the genuine authors who are SPAs. One female(?) horror novel writer has had me stumped as to how she could publish so many books in such a short space of time, now I think I know. If you search on google you will find a lot of articles on making money with Amazon by using ghostwriters who will write a book for you (after a chapter list and summary is sent) for $20 plus you can get a cover designed by an agency in the Philippines for $5 and so you have a book ready to go that cost you $25 and was not written by you. It amazed me when I read about it, and made me quite angry too. I guess avoiding anything that is included in Kindle Unlimited may help you with reading genuine authors works. Again, apologies to the SPA genuine authors, but there's just too many scammers that exploit the service.

And I still can't find a definitive list of Amazon's self-published authors - even the top 100 would be useful.

[Sirtel]

There is no such list.

If you want to avoid self-published authors for sure, buy from known publishers.

Personally, I don't particularly care who wrote the book. If I like it, I'll learn more about the author and make my buying decisions according to what I learned. If I don't like it, I couldn't care less who actually wrote it.

[Little.Egret]

Many excellent authors started by self-publishing to reprint their backlist and now continue with original work.

As Lois Mcmaster Bujold (though eventually some have appeared in limited edition hc).

See https://kriswrites.com/ for why.

[Readirect]

Originally Posted by ryanbhuvam

After reading about the 'Phillipines', ghostwriters and SPAs earning thousands each year for doing not very much i.e. hoodwinking the readers, I've decided to only purchase books that have had a hard back release. Amazon has set up a way for SPAs to publish paperbacks so even using paperbacks as a filter is no longer viable. I apologize to the genuine authors who are SPAs. One female(?) horror novel writer has had me stumped as to how she could publish so many books in such a short space of time, now I think I know. If you search on google you will find a lot of articles on making money with Amazon by using ghostwriters who will write a book for you (after a chapter list and summary is sent) for $20 plus you can get a cover designed by an agency in the Philippines for $5 and so you have a book ready to go that cost you $25 and was not written by you. It amazed me when I read about it, and made me quite angry too. I guess avoiding anything that is included in Kindle Unlimited may help you with reading genuine authors works. Again, apologies to the SPA genuine authors, but there's just too many scammers that exploit the service.

And I still can't find a definitive list of Amazon's self-published authors - even the top 100 would be useful.

You can always download a sample of any book that you want. Read the sample and, if you like the sample, buy the book.

Not exactly rocket science, is it?

[disconnected]

Originally Posted by Readirect

You can always download a sample of any book that you want. Read the sample and, if you like the sample, buy the book.

Not exactly rocket science, is it?

A perfect system. Finish your current book. Go to Amazon. Narrow down your search to something like English language mysteries published in the last thirty days. Wonderful, only about eight thousand new books to slog through -- of which maybe a few hundred? are or have ever been trad pubbed (heaven forbid you're interested in back llists). Get impatient and try a few random samples. Find one that doesn't seem too awful and buy it, only to discover it was produced by one of the hoodwinking ghostwriters the OP mentioned -- a few chapters of an actual readable book, followed by unedited garbage or samples/ads for a bunch of other books.

If you only want to read best-sellers or whatever Amazon and the major publishers are pushing this month it's easy; otherwise, not so much.

Fortunately for me I'm retired. I have enough time to be able to think of the search as part of my reading hobby -- along with comparing prices between ebookstores, making lists of books and adding them to ereaderiq for price watch, following fictfact, bookbub, bookgorilla, earlybirdbooks, favorite author newsletters, etc., virtual travelling, maintaining my Calibre library, researching and buying ereaders and cases, and spending time here.