Upon searching Amazon and Goodreads, author Jane Friedman recently discovered a half-dozen listings of fraudulent books using her name, likely filled with either junk or AI-generated content.
On Goodreads, the process requires authors to reach out to volunteer “librarians” and join specific groups and post in comment threads to request the removal of illegitimate books.
Friedman reports that Goodreads removed the offending titles from her official author profile hours after her blog post went live.
Although the fraudulent titles were eventually removed from Amazon after the story blew up, Friedman’s experience sheds light on the complex process authors must navigate to protect their name and work online.
In a world where generative AI could potentially flood our communication channels with noise—low-quality, automated creative output in unlimited quantity—open selling platforms such as Amazon haven’t caught up with how to deal with the problem yet.
On X, historian Dean Grodzins wrote, "I once bought what Amazon indicated was a paperback edition of George Saunders’s Swim in the Pond in the Rain.