Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how they get made

Related content and context

• Several commenters recommend a linked YouTube documentary exposing scammy “passive income” ebook courses, praising its research and humor.
• Other long-form videos on flat earth, crypto, meme stocks, and dead malls are cited as useful background on scams and financial delusions.

Amazon’s incentives and marketplace issues

• Many argue Amazon is structurally incentivized to tolerate fakes and junk (ebooks and physical goods) because it profits from sales and ads.
• Short-term executive incentives and massive customer base reduce pressure to improve quality until users churn at scale.
• Sponsored results and weak faceted search are seen as core problems; Amazon seems optimized to push paying advertisers, not the best products.
• Some describe counterfeits (e.g., vitamins) and low-quality or swapped returns, making the marketplace unreliable.

Garbage ebooks and scam mechanics

• Thread highlights AI- or template-generated ebooks: implausibly prolific “polymath” authors, poor translation classics, nonsense activity and puzzle books.
• A key point: most money is in selling “how to make passive-income ebooks” courses, not in the ebooks themselves.
• Amazon’s cap of three self-published books per day is widely mocked as meaningless; scammers can use multiple accounts.
• Tactics include gaming obscure categories for “bestseller” tags and flooding search with slight variations of the same book.

Gatekeeping, curation, and alternatives

• Many see the core issue as loss of effective gatekeeping and curation at scale.
• Libraries, traditional publishers, and reputable imprints are suggested as partial filters, though publishers also release junk.
• People increasingly rely on human curators: reviewers, influencers, niche communities, and fanfiction sites.
• Libraries (and apps like Libby) are praised for quality control and extra perks (tools, online courses, pro resources).

AI’s role and future content flood

• Commenters compare AI content to earlier content farms: same dynamic, vastly more scalable.
• Some argue AI only differs in scale; others say scale itself changes the problem (like a tsunami vs a ripple).
• One novelist describes using AI as a brainstorming/editorial partner, not a ghostwriter, and finds it makes writing more enjoyable.

User strategies and differing experiences

• Suggested defenses: always read samples, check publishers, avoid obscure zero-review titles, use refunds aggressively.
• Some have largely abandoned Amazon or Prime in favor of local stores, manufacturer sites, or other marketplaces.
• A minority reports that with careful sampling, Kindle remains mostly usable and the “garbage ebook” problem is rarely encountered.