They are competing for attention of potential buyers. In terms of sales new authors are similar to these spammy nonsense books. Therefore when Amazon chooses a “new author to promote” chances are it’s going to be a spammy one instead of more genuine work. I agree that amazon should react to this as it should hurt their brand from both an authors and readers point of view

I think you’ve misunderstood this. Listen to the two recent episodes of behind the bastards on this topic if you want to get a good handle on it.

This is half the problem: these books ARE selling. I do try to be kind, but I can’t deny that there are a lot of idiots in the world who seem to have a fair amount of disposable income.

They are buying these books for their children, or being duped by a pretty front cover, or a synopsis that sounds up their alley.

The books aren’t ‘word salad’ so much as they are simply a cheap facsimile of actual stories. They have the elements of storytelling, munged together into a brain-breaking stew - but they aren’t word salad, they just aren’t human.

This whole situation is making me fairly uncomfortable, but also making me laugh. I love books. I love literature. The idea that one of the largest retailers in the world: an almost tech-giant that made all of their money flogging books to the masses cannot seem to clear its platform of fake books ghost written by computers with a little unscrupulous human help is simultaneously delicious and disturbing as hell.

I hate amazon with every fiber of my being, but this doesn’t feel like a good omen for my children.

What’s odd is that this isn’t an especially new thing in terms of possibly. Maybe if they wanted some veneer of viability for like, a paragraph or two, but any reader is going to catch on to what’s happening pretty fast.

The titles are still nonsense enough that even a simple Markov chain could have made them. So I think the main issue at play is whatever they’re doing to exploit themselves to the top of the list.