Image by jurvetson via FlickrSpammers and pirates - really the same people - have mounted against Amazon's Kindle an unprecedented attack over the past few months: spammers have filled Amazon with "crappy" books - really collections of stuff found free on Internet (in the so-called "public domain"); pirates have stolen the work of writers who had published on the Kindle, like Ruth Ann Nordin.
I wrote an article on the spamming/pirate problem for Authopublisher, pointing out that, because it is easy to upload up to 10 books a day on the Kindle publishing platform, some con artists have taken advantage and published thousands of books. There is even one master spammer, a certain Mr. Parker, supposedly a marketing expert, who has produced between 100,000 and 200,000 titles! With an algorithm of his own invention, he pulls together material freely available on Internet to produce "how to" manuals and surveys, and claims that he is now about to produce romance novels with the same system!
For the full article: click here.
At first, it looked like Amazon would do nothing to either defend itself or its authors.
Passive Guy, an extremely active blogger (he has up to 3 or 4 posts a day!), with more than 3,500 followers on Twitter, launched a tweet campaign yesterday. We all joined in (I certainly did!) and it seems the campaign gave results: today, Ruth Ann Nordin's pirated book was reportedly pulled out by Amazon and is no longer listed in Kindle Shop.
For more about this story on the Passive Guy's site: click here.
But the spammer threat remains - and possibly more pirated books will turn up in the following days.
If Amazon doesn't want to give up its Number One place to Barnes & Noble, it is imperative it fixes its problem and secures its Kindle platform from both spammers and pirates. See the article below: it looks like sales of the B&N Nook Color have already pulled ahead of the Kindle. The time when more books may be sold on the Nook than on the Kindle could yet happen - in any case, it is getting closer!
So Amazon, look out!
