Authors like Rory Cellan-Jones are grappling with rampant book spamming, often involving numerous fake titles uploaded in a single day
Publishing a book marks a significant moment for any writer, including Rory Cellan-Jones.
“Like any author, I constantly monitor Amazon,” he explained. “And then something unexpected appeared.”
The former BBC technology correspondent authored a memoir delving into his family’s history. What caught his attention on Amazon was a biography of himself, complete with an amateurish cover, authored by someone unfamiliar to him.
“I thought, ‘This is odd – who’s writing a biography about me?'” Cellan-Jones shared with the Observer. “I’m realistic; it’s already challenging for me to sell books about my own life, let alone for others to do so.”
However, upon examining a few passages, Cellan-Jones discovered that he had become a victim of someone trying to exploit his memoir by releasing a book apparently generated by artificial intelligence. This was part of a wave of AI-generated titles that had emerged following the introduction of ChatGPT, allowing people to create pages of text without the effort of writing it.
Amazon is essentially permitting the proliferation of book spam and promoting it to the individual most infuriated by it—Rory Cellan-Jones, the writer
Cellan-Jones’s book, titled “Ruskin Park: Sylvia, Me and the BBC,” recounts his discovery of a shoebox filled with letters from his mother, revealing her love affair with his father. He only met his father at the age of 23, and the book also chronicles how his mother spent most of her life in a one-bedroom flat in south London. He described it as a story “about growing up with a single mother and a father who wasn’t present.”
In contrast, the book competing with his family’s investigative narrative was, according to Cellan-Jones, “pure fiction.” He remarked, “There are sections depicting the Cellan-Jones family, an academic household gathered around the dining table … His father portrayed as a benevolent academic, his mother as a teacher. It’s simply untrue.”
Then, Amazon sent me an email with the message: ‘You might be interested in this.’ Their algorithm had concluded that I would want this unrelated book instead of suggesting my meticulously crafted work that I’ve poured my heart and soul into… Essentially, they are permitting the spread of book spam and endorsing it to the very person who finds it most aggravating.”
Amazon did eventually remove the fake biography and other works by the anonymous author, but numerous similar titles manage to slip past the safeguards designed to filter out subpar books.
It has been relatively straightforward for book spammers to publish numerous titles in a single day through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) system, which empowers authors to independently release both ebooks and printed books.
A person using the name “Steven Walryn” released over 30 books, primarily consisting of nonsensical and redundant guides on utilizing various camera brands, along with a couple of fantasy romance novels. In May, they published 15 of these books on the same day. Amazon removed these books last week.
Amazon couldn’t provide information on the quantity of books it prevents from being published or those that have been removed. In August, Jane Friedman, a publishing writer, compelled Amazon to take down five counterfeit titles falsely attributed to her, which seemed to be generated by AI.
“Amazon is evidently grappling with significant challenges due to the surge in AI-generated content on its platform, and it appears to be trying to catch up,” remarked Nicola Solomon, the CEO of the Society of Authors (SoA).
Recently, Amazon announced that publishers of new Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) releases must disclose if their books contain AI-generated content and are limited to publishing three books daily, changes welcomed by Solomon.
“However, these modest adjustments seem geared more toward streamlining Amazon’s processes than benefiting readers and human authors,” she noted. The SoA is advocating for Amazon to clearly label AI-generated products and enable readers to filter out AI-generated titles.
Rashik Parmar, the Group Chief Executive of BCS, the chartered institute for IT, emphasized the need for government intervention to mandate the inclusion of a digital watermark on AI-generated material, enabling easy tracking.
Parmar stated, “The UK has a unique opportunity to lead in responsible computing,” provided that legislation can assist British IT professionals in showcasing a higher ethical standard. He also raised the possibility of “coded in Britain” becoming a symbol of something exceptional.
In response, an Amazon spokesperson stated that all publishers must adhere to the company’s content guidelines. They noted, “We dedicate significant time and resources to ensure compliance with our guidelines and remove books that do not adhere to them… While we permit AI-generated content, we prohibit AI-generated content that violates our content guidelines, especially content that creates a negative customer experience.
