I only buy books from thriftbooks. Haven't seen any slop books there yet. And there's just something about a well worn book. They are just more fun to read.
this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2026
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public libraries are pretty cool
Well duh. Also real authors are flooding Amazon with crap too. Have people not been paying attention?
Before AI they offered a lot of books which were just printed wikipedia articles.
However AI books massively increases the problem, because they can be created by the thousands, millions even, in seconds by any grifter out there, and there are a lot of grifters.
Any sort of argument of "it has always been bad" (and it has), are not very constructive, because the current situation enhances the shittification of the internet on a scale that was impossible before. It is an unprecedented situation.
Yeah it really is. So was Amazon bulk printing pulp.
Its almost like maybe amazon wasn't the place to get random books.
AI will never become JARVIS, KITT, HAL9000, or whatever super AI you seen in media.
Of course not. Wasn't my point.
How soon until Amazon buys one of each, prints them; ships them to a different warehouse, rips the pages out and scans them back in?
I swear this is the real reason AI companies are concerned about watermarking - not for the public good, but so they can keep their model training inputs clean.
If I had to guess, most of these 'books' are some kink bullshit. Ever since I looked for the rankings in the Kindle section, it was flooded by books with men or women stripping on the cover and some random erotic titles. Among them some rare exceptions (and most of these were some cheap self-help stuff).
That being said, I wouldn't be surprised this is what's being actually affected. I can't see the actual data or content of the article though, because it requires me to subscribe and I definitely won't.
Copycats might also be an issue. I remember that when Douglas Wreden published his book, he had to deal with numerous AI-generated copycats popping up one after the other, using his name and face, trying to trick people into buying their book, because his had become popular.
I get the impression that most kindle books are sold (well rented) by subscription, i.e. all you can read for a fixed monthly fee, so a subscriber downloading an AI book or other crap doesn't pay any increment to do so. IDK how the revenues are divided up.
You don’t get paid until the reader reads x amount of pages of the book.
I sell way way more than through that subscription bs. I removed my book from it. It keeps the author on Amazon.
So these things are actually sold in recognizable numbers? smh
A philosopher has once said that you should only read books that are >100 years old.
Huh, my high school teachers in the 90s were all philosophers
Who the hell is biting them though? I wouldn't even think of buying a book by a human without prior research. Gifts maybe?
People with metal teeth! They can bite through this, they can bite through that...
They can even bite through the main power conduit!
Exactly what I wonder. I have a list of 110 (and growing) books I want to read, all of them written by human beings, and I discover something new all the time. There's no way I will buy a random book on Amazon, be it from AI or by some author I've never heard anything about.
Especially since they could generate the same slop for themselves
Can’t read the article :(
I wasn't buying books from Amazon. I'm not gonna start now. Certainly not going to start buying AI slop "books".