While browsing through some 3D printing books, I came across a very suspicious situation.
Fabbaloo readers will know that each week we publish a “Book of the Week” selection from Amazon’s catalog. These books are timely selections that relate to not only 3D printing, but also to adjacent technologies, such as 3D scanning, CAD, as well as general skills including design, project management, etc.
This week I was roving through the database and found what I thought could be a potential book for the week’s selection. Entitled, “3D Printing Technology Guidebook: Make Your Dream Come True Regarding 3D Printing Technology”, I read the description and concluded that this book is simply one of many basic introductory texts with little to differentiate it from countless others.
I moved on to looking at a second book, apparently released the same day! This book, entitled ”3D Printing Technology Manual: How To Become A Pro In 3D Printing Technology” also provoked my interest. However, reading its description I was similarly disappointed.
Hold on a minute.
The second book’s description is IDENTICAL to the first book I looked at!
The odds of that happening are literally zero, so something was afoot here. I looked a bit deeper into this situation.
Both books have unique covers, and the titles are somewhat different. Both are written by different authors, ”Wilson Hirliman” and “Dwain Mctague”. Yet they have identical descriptions and appear to cover much the same material.
What’s going on here?
I did some more searching and found a third book with an extremely similar topic and description, “3D Printing Technology Secrets: How To Start Your Journey In The World Of 3-Dimensional Printing” by a “Jackson Sankaran”. And a fourth version, “3D Printing Technology Secrets: How To Start Your Journey In The World Of 3-Dimensional Printing” by “Darcey Hillmer”. Again, these have near-identical descriptions and this time identical cover images.
Here’s four versions of a description excerpt from four supposedly different books. This is the first one:
“If you want to become a 3D Printing expert, then don’t miss this 3D Printing Technology Manual Book!
Inside this 3D Printing Technology Manual Book, you will find a step-by-step guide on how to start your journey in the world of 3-dimensional printing. Whether you are just starting up and desirous to 3D-print different kinds of items maybe as a hobby or as a business venture, the content of this book will unravel some hidden secrets you may need to make your dream come true regarding 3D printing technology”
And the second:
“If you want to become a 3D Printing expert, then don’t miss this 3D Printing Technology Manual Book!
Inside this 3D Printing Technology Manual Book, you will find a step-by-step guide on how to start your journey in the world of 3-dimensional printing. Whether you are just starting up and desirous to 3D-print different kinds of items maybe as a hobby or as a business venture, the content of this book will unravel some hidden secrets you may need to make your dream come true regarding 3D printing technology”
And the third:
“If you want to become a 3D Printing expert, then don’t miss this 3D Printing Technology Manual Book!
Inside this 3D Printing Technology Manual Book, you will find a step-by-step guide on how to start your journey in the world of 3-dimensional printing. Whether you are just starting up and desirous to 3D-print different kinds of items maybe as a hobby or as a business venture, the content of this book will unravel some hidden secrets you may need to make your dream come true regarding 3D printing technology”
And the fourth:
“If you want to become a 3D Printing expert, then don’t miss this 3D Printing Technology Manual Book!
Inside this 3D Printing Technology Manual Book, you will find a step-by-step guide on how to start your journey in the world of 3-dimensional printing. Whether you are just starting up and desirous to 3D-print different kinds of items maybe as a hobby or as a business venture, the content of this book will unravel some hidden secrets you may need to make your dream come true regarding 3D printing technology”
They look similar, don’t they? They even have identical grammatical and punctuation errors.
Who are these authors? In each case, the author appears on Amazon only once, each for their corresponding book.
I looked up these authors outside of Amazon to see who they were. This is what I found for ”Wilson Hirliman”:
“Dwain Mctague” appears only in an entry for the book in question. The others had similar results: they seem to only exist with respect to these suspicious books.
All of these books offer an ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number), which is a unique number for entries in Amazon’s database, but none of them post an ISBN. “ISBN” is the International Standard Book Number, a 13-digit key that uniquely identifies each published book. ISBNs are obtained for a modest fee or even at no charge by authors and publishers.
The fact that there are no ISBNs on these identical books is rather suspicious.
Clearly, these books are part of a scam, but how does it work? I dug a bit deeper and found out there is a massive problem at Amazon.
Criminal actors have been leveraging Amazon’s self-publishing feature to punch out fake duplicate books. It’s rather ingenious: electronic versions are downloaded from Amazon’s Kindle store, and then converted into text. These are then run through “synonmizer” text software, which changes the words but leaves the meaning (mostly) the same. This allows the perps to upload the book as a new entry that is not detected by Amazon’s automated plagiarism detectors.
Give it a title, a fancy cover, and it’s up for sale.
Then it gets worse. According to David Gaughran:
“These thieves make the book free for a few days, and then use a variety of banned methods to generate a huge and immediate surge in downloads – generally suspected to be bots or clickfarms or dummy accounts, or some combination thereof. These fake books then suddenly jump into the Top 20 of the free charts, displacing authors who have gone to considerable effort to put together an advertising campaign for their work.”
Gaughran’s post is from a few years ago, and it would appear that Amazon has still not overcome this issue. If you look further you will certainly come across this situation regardless of the topic you’re seeking.
What should we make of this?
My suggestion is that when searching Amazon for books, be aware there is fake content on the loose. Always check for a real ISBN to ensure there is actually a proper author and publisher behind the work.
Remember, this goes for ANY book purchase, not just for 3D print-related works.
Please support real authors, not bots and thieves.
