Scamming Amazon: Creating a Fake Bestseller in One Week

Captivating Claire by Amanda Ward

It’s no secret that the world of self-publishing on Amazon has been mired in controversy for years. But recently, I came across a story about an Amazon “success” that I feel perfectly illustrates the problem.

This is John Havel. He’s a writer for The Hustle, a publication that’s currently embroiled in a month-long series about people who “game the system.” Havel penned an article about the insanely scammy world of Amazon Kindle eBooks last week. And while most people would turn away from the entire topic in disgust after learning just how seedy the world of eBooks really is, Havel instead decided to put this newfound knowledge to the test. He wondered just how hard it would be to scam Amazon—so he decided to try it.

He “wrote” the book above. Those quotation marks are important because, in this instance, “writing” essentially equates to copying 60,000 words from a romance novel in the public domain, pasting them into a Microsoft Word document, and doing some minor editing/name changing. From there, he moved onto creating the cover and author page for (fake) writer Amber Ward whose biography includes such totally made-up gems as, “2015 AMSR® Finalist” and “Amber lives in Ohio with her husband, two daughters, and their spirited Yorkie, Boots.” Havel then continued to the uploading process, utilizing meticulous attention to detail in an effort to convince potential readers that the book was entirely legitimate. Then he did some category-shuffling on Amazon and asked 50 of his friends to submit reviews to the book that Havel himself had copied and pasted from other Amazon reviews.

Within a week, Captivating Claire: A first-time, billionaire romance was number one in the African-American Historical Romance and Ancient World Romance categories in the Kindle Store.

It’s worth mentioning that the only snag in this entire process came after uploading when Amazon informed Havel that his text appeared to have been plagiarized. He was then given the option of admitting plagiarism or resubmitting the draft. He chose the latter and faced absolutely no resistance for the rest of the week.

Now is probably a good time to bring up some of the reasoning behind this entire ordeal. Havel did this as a week-long social experiment. He posted the book in the Free section of the Kindle Store and what minor profits there were ($9.96) were donated to charity. He gamed Amazon largely to see if it could be done as quickly and easily as he had been led to believe. At the end of the week, Havel came to this conclusion, “If I kept at this full time for another five months or so, I believe this strategy could bring in a comfy salary…Now, whether I’d feel comfortable doing that is another story.”

Honestly, I think the real villain here is Amazon itself. Sure, you can say that Havel gaming the system was immoral. But isn’t the fact that it could be so easily scammed far worse?

Recommended Reading:

 

Phishing Dark Waters: The Offensive and Defensive Sides of Malicious Emails by Christopher Hadnagy and Michele Fincher (Wiley, March 2015)

While we’re on the subject of scams running rampant in today’s internet culture, you should probably also be aware of Phishing. The entire purpose of this technique is to deceive users into giving away sensitive information or installing malicious software. While normally this sort of thing is easily spotted, Phishing attempts can be so slight that they’re almost undetectable. This book attempts to demystify a huge scam and leave the reader knowing exactly what to keep an eye on in order to avoid being compromised. It is a fascinating read that deals not only with the process of Phishing itself, but the psychological impulses that feed into our desire to share and the ease with which we slip into victimization.