Re:Amazon Limits Authors to 3 Books a Day to Combat AI-Gener...
by envsubst on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @11:22PM
(#37580067)
A 15 minute human review process that checks if it:
- is copy pasted from another source or the internet
- respects copyright
- is written in the language it says it is
In graduate school nobody can understand each other's papers, so the colleges set up a massive list of formatting guidelines. The idea being the focus on formatting means you at least had to spend a minimum amount of effort.
Re:Amazon Limits Authors to 3 Books a Day to Combat AI-Gener...
by dragonwriter on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @11:45PM
(#37580157)
A 15-minute human review is not going to be able to check all three of those things, or really do much of a job on even either of the first two in isolation.
Re:Amazon Limits Authors to 3 Books a Day to Combat AI-Gener...
by selcuka on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @10:15PM
(#37579678)
Money laundering might be a thing, but I can't see how they could benefit from stolen credit cards. They have to refund when the card owner contacts their bank, don't they?
Re:Amazon Limits Authors to 3 Books a Day to Combat AI-Gener...
by ronsor on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @10:58PM
(#37579934)
That assumes the cardholder actually realizes their card has been stolen. Many people may not notice an extra $50/month being siphoned from them, especially if they already use Amazon.
Re:Amazon Limits Authors to 3 Books a Day to Combat AI-Gener...
by angry_moose on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @10:08PM
(#37579632)
I could see that for a few reasons. Someone new to Amazon adding their entire library at once, an updated edition of a long running series, different language versions of the same book, etc. Probably not many (any?) legitimate authors writing 3 books a day, but there are lots of instances where an author might be trying to add several at once.
Something like 60/month seems like it'd be a little more reasonable to allow these legitimate upload waves though.
Re:Amazon Limits Authors to 3 Books a Day to Combat AI-Gener...
by selcuka on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @10:12PM
(#37579655)
> Something like 60/month seems like it'd be a little more reasonable
That would cause scammers to create new accounts, upload 60 books, hope to sell a few on the first few days until they get caught, then rinse and repeat.
Amazon will probably also monitor accounts who upload 3 books a day using some heuristic so that they can stop it before it becomes an issue.
Re:Amazon Limits Authors to 3 Books a Day to Combat AI-Gener...
by makeitdouble on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @10:15PM
(#37579673)
The notion of "book" is way fuzzier that it was in the olden days. There's nothing stopping an author from releasing one or two thousand words every as a single book, inside a larger story (basically having a book for what could have been single chapters ?)
Same way illustrators could publish their roughs and croquis as books, etc.
As those can be set with a 0$ price, and virtually no inventory issue, it feels like a practice that doesn't penalize either amazon, nor the author, nor the readers.
Re:Amazon Limits Authors to 3 Books a Day to Combat AI-Gener...
by dragonwriter on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @11:42PM
(#37580140)
> There’s nothing stopping an author from releasing one or two thousand words every as a single book, inside a larger story (basically having a book for what could have been single chapters ?)
Amazon has a separate service within KDP for exactly that kind of serialization, [0] so while its true that KDP handles a wider range of books than just the novel-size works people seem to be thinking about, that particular example is probably an explicitly not-prioritized use case for regular “book” publishing on KDP.
Re:Amazon Limits Authors to 3 Books a Day to Combat AI-Gener...
by twobitshifter on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @11:11PM
(#37579997)
My friend wrote a children’s book using AI. Even without AI, it may be possible to make a few children’s books with the same characters in a single day. I’m curious though, who are the authors who have published 3 long form books per month?
Re:Amazon Limits Authors to 3 Books a Day to Combat AI-Gener...
by bombcar on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @11:19PM
(#37580047)
Depends on your definition of what a book is. If you step outside of novels you have books that are mainly tables of facts, or get updated monthly, etc.
Re:Amazon Limits Authors to 3 Books a Day to Combat AI-Gener...
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @11:24PM
(#37580073)
This was probably not meant to be a humourous comment but it made me laugh.
Something tells me these "authors" will not be winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, inclusion in the Book of the Month club, or any literary honours for that matter.
Re:Amazon Limits Authors to 3 Books a Day to Combat AI-Gener...
by IronWolve on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @11:19PM
(#37580051)
Theres lots of fake 'work books' being uploaded to come up first in search results.
Amazon has some major issues with AI books flooding the initial results.
Re:Amazon Limits Authors to 3 Books a Day to Combat AI-Gener...
by tzs on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @11:27PM
(#37580085)
Isaac Asimov averaged an original book about every 6 weeks over the time between his first book was published and his death. He also averaged editing a new anthology or collection of prior work (his or others) every 15 weeks. He also averaged a non-book story every 6 week. And an essay every 9 days on average. Oh and also an average of about 6 letters or postcards per day(!).
For his books (authored + edited) that comes to an average rate about two orders of magnitude under Amazon's limit. Even if Asimov had stopped writing non-book stories, essays, letters, and postcards to devote more time to books, he probably would still be an order of magnitude away from hitting Amazon's limit.
I assume Amazon wanted to set their limit high enough that no legitimate human authors would hit it, but they were way more conservative than they needed to be.
Re:Amazon Limits Authors to 3 Books a Day to Combat AI-Gener...
by WheelsAtLarge on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @11:50PM
(#37580181)
I can see where some people are acting as publishers for other authors or are commissioning others to create books for publishing so they can upload multiple books at a time. I'd be interested in knowing who can hit the limit and why.
Quality is another thing. A while back my library was purchasing tech related kindle books just because of the title. I know this since I borrowed one and it was just garbage. It was a combination of Wikipedia articles plus stuff that was gathered from the web with no editing.
Re:Amazon Limits Authors to 3 Books a Day to Combat AI-Gener...
by bizzletk on Wednesday September 20, 2023 @01:22AM
(#37580638)
Folding Ideas on youtube has an excellent explanation of the business model behind the rise of EBook Spam.
The Mikkelson Twins are running a massive MLM scheme but instead of steak knives or scented candles, it's "training and support for creating your own EBook Passive Income Stream" which leads to what we see on Amazon ebook listings.
The video also goes into the darker side of the incentives that lead people to commission ghostwriters, AI editors and the crushing labour demands of the people employed to write these books:
- is copy pasted from another source or the internet
- respects copyright
- is written in the language it says it is
In graduate school nobody can understand each other's papers, so the colleges set up a massive list of formatting guidelines. The idea being the focus on formatting means you at least had to spend a minimum amount of effort.
Something like 60/month seems like it'd be a little more reasonable to allow these legitimate upload waves though.
That would cause scammers to create new accounts, upload 60 books, hope to sell a few on the first few days until they get caught, then rinse and repeat.
Amazon will probably also monitor accounts who upload 3 books a day using some heuristic so that they can stop it before it becomes an issue.
Same way illustrators could publish their roughs and croquis as books, etc.
As those can be set with a 0$ price, and virtually no inventory issue, it feels like a practice that doesn't penalize either amazon, nor the author, nor the readers.
Amazon has a separate service within KDP for exactly that kind of serialization, [0] so while its true that KDP handles a wider range of books than just the novel-size works people seem to be thinking about, that particular example is probably an explicitly not-prioritized use case for regular “book” publishing on KDP.
[0] Kindle Vella: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/GR2L4AHPMQ44HNQ7
Your friend might be part of the problem.
KDP “books” include “low-content books” (prompt journals, etc.), not just novels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_B._Gibson
Something tells me these "authors" will not be winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, inclusion in the Book of the Month club, or any literary honours for that matter.
For his books (authored + edited) that comes to an average rate about two orders of magnitude under Amazon's limit. Even if Asimov had stopped writing non-book stories, essays, letters, and postcards to devote more time to books, he probably would still be an order of magnitude away from hitting Amazon's limit.
I assume Amazon wanted to set their limit high enough that no legitimate human authors would hit it, but they were way more conservative than they needed to be.
Quality is another thing. A while back my library was purchasing tech related kindle books just because of the title. I know this since I borrowed one and it was just garbage. It was a combination of Wikipedia articles plus stuff that was gathered from the web with no editing.
But yes, I see your point.
https://www.agathachristie.com/news/2021/a-life-in-numbers-1....
The Mikkelson Twins are running a massive MLM scheme but instead of steak knives or scented candles, it's "training and support for creating your own EBook Passive Income Stream" which leads to what we see on Amazon ebook listings.
The video also goes into the darker side of the incentives that lead people to commission ghostwriters, AI editors and the crushing labour demands of the people employed to write these books:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biYciU1uiUw