
Kindle edition of Classic Computer Science Problems in Python is unauthorized - WoodenChair
https://twitter.com/davekopec/status/1302578592552022018
======
woofie11
Amazon is getting overrun by scams. They're behind eBay and Aliexpress at this
point.

I kind of feel like they need to adopt a labor-intensive zero-tolerance policy
for this kind of stuff.

There's a bimodal distribution. You can have a few scams, throw a ton of
resources at each (to the point of prosecution, etc.) to deter that number
from growing. Or you can have a huge number of scams.

Amazon just swung over to the other side, and if they don't get it under
control, their brand value will go to nothing.

~~~
OneLeggedCat
I'm sure they're watching this closely. But for now, scams are still more
profitable for them than cracking down on those scams. A moderate amount of
impact to brand value is always acceptable to near-monopolies.

~~~
woofie11
Amazon has always been forward-thinking, and they ran at a loss for decades to
build up a trillion dollar business. I really don't think short-term thinking
is what's causing them to tear it down right now.

I have no insider information, but I rather suspect that either:

1) it either got out-of-control to where it would cost billions of dollars to
address

2) that there's some organizational dysfunction to where they're not competent
to address it.

Or something similar. Those sorts of problems are tough. Cultures, incentive
structures, and organizational design issues are slower and harder to resolve
than just about anything else, and the theory for how to fix them is not well-
developed. Sometimes you try something, and it crashes-and-burns.

~~~
thrwn_frthr_awy
OP did not say it is a short term plan. Amazon could very well be accepting
some amount of bad press around this if profits keep increasing.

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null_object
This has become a really serious problem buying any sort of Kindle book these
days. I got very tired of the OCR-created classic books that are sold with
poor formatting, spelling errors and sometimes even remnants of the conversion
process left in the text, so I always really carefully search for specific
publishers, for instance "Jane Austen Sanditon Penguin English Library" (or
similar). But even here all the reviews for the tens of different editions are
simply mingled together - including people complaining about torn paperback
covers, and random editions that are stolen from Project Gutenberg and sold
for profit on Amazon, as well as some that are simply gibberish and seem to
have been run through Google-translate. That particular edition above even
links to the wrong item from the search.

So sad that Amazon don't even care about their Kindle book inventory any
longer: this is an area where they could easily guarantee authenticity and
quality - if they could give a shit.

~~~
nebulous1
> But even here all the reviews for the tens of different editions are simply
> mingled together

This isn't just books. There are product pages that cover multiple different
models with all the reviews and ratings mashed together, even though the
models have essentially nothing to do with each other. Like different sizes of
Samsung phone but the different sizes have entirely different
motherboards/screen techs/cpus/memory.

~~~
Stratoscope
For many products there is a way to separate out the reviews, although it is
not obvious how to do it:

Click the "nnn customer ratings" to get to the review section.

In the barchart on the left, click any of the "n star" or "nn%" links.

Above the reviews will be a row of dropdown lists, which may include "All
formats" or "All styles" or the like. There you can select the individual
product variation. You can also change the "n star only" to "All stars" to get
all the reviews for that variation.

Unfortunately this _doesn 't_ work for the book being discussed here.

~~~
tzs
I just checked a dozen books, from the ones Amazon recommends for me, from
their best sellers, and in some randomly chosen categories, and didn't run
across any that allowed format filtering.

Also, I distinctly recall I used to see reviews where between the reviewers
name and their review, Amazon added a note saying what format the review was
for. I'm not seeing that anymore, either.

~~~
Stratoscope
Interesting, I do still see the filter choices for other products, and I
thought I used to see them for books.

Maybe they stopped doing it for books? (Other filters are still there, but not
filtering by edition.)

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waihtis
This is just a core component of Amazon's business model which can best be
characterized as "intentional oversight", where little effort is made against
illegitimate users and scenarios _if_ they bring in revenue for them. It has
been true for a very long time in many different scenarios, including physical
piracy and (via hearsay) lax credit card validation policies.

~~~
my123
> lax credit card validation policies

However, if you try to pay through a bank account (at least in Germany), it's
an utter pain. Same with Maestro debit cards...

~~~
amaccuish
I tried this the other day since amazon.de kept bugging me about it. But
what's the point. Like is it cheaper for Amazon than Mastercard?

If I pay with my mastercard I get a notification instantly and the money
disappears. With SEPA-Lastschrift it takes ages and makes budgeting difficult.

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guiambros
This sucks:

" _It 's crazy that @Amazon has allowed this. There is literally a poorly
formatted pirated version of my book on the Amazon Kindle store accumulating 1
and 2 star reviews for its poor formatting that count against all editions._"

I enjoyed the book (paper copy, purchased from Manning), so this prompted me
to leave an official review.

~~~
WoodenChair
Thank you for your support!

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paultopia
How does this happen though? Like, policing counterfeit physical products in
an environment full of third-party sellers is actual work, because you have to
somehow figure out how to inspect or filter a bunch of actual things from
many, many, people.

By contrast, there aren't that many sizeable publishing houses in the world.
Manning obviously isn't huge, but they aren't tiny either. They've been around
for over 25 years, they have hundreds of titles---they're at least a medium-
sized, serious, commercial press. And Amazon has been in the book industry for
forever.

So: how hard would it really be to maintain a list of authorized agents for
serious, commercial presses, and not sell e-books for works currently in print
from those presses, unless the person selling them is one of those agents, or
can prove that the e-book is authorized/in the public domain? This does not
seem hard at all. Like, not even a little bit. Hell, I'd go so far as to call
it easy.

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mellosouls
For anybody who would like to sample this interesting sounding book, there
appears to be substantial preview contents available on the publisher's site
with a nice audio version as well.

I don't know the limitations; it appears to be constrained by viewport access
only (ie. you can read it all without signing in but not offline; it scrambles
text when you scroll).

Example: [https://livebook.manning.com/book/classic-computer-
science-p...](https://livebook.manning.com/book/classic-computer-science-
problems-in-python/chapter-4)

Nice presentation work by Manning/Livebook.

------
beervirus
Sounds about like the physical products on Amazon these days.

~~~
Wistar
This. I have to be so careful about making sure who it is that is the actual
vendor. Amazon used to clearly state that a product was "sold and fulfilled by
amazon" but I don't see that anymore.

~~~
bb101
I've read that Amazon warehouses mix every vendor's products with the same UPC
code into the same box. If that's true, then it's pot luck whether you receive
a legitimate or fake product.

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acabal
Copyright infringement aside, I always tell people that the Kindle ecosystem
(from their crappy who-cares approach to their store catalog, to the crappy
software in their Kindle products) is a complete disaster. Shoddy formatting
is the norm and is only encouraged by the Kindle's shoddy renderer and file
format.

Amazon may have kickstarted the ereading device boom, but Kindles surely don't
deserve to be as popular as they are any more, especially with a tech-savvy
crowd like HN. Other alternatives exist that are much, much better. Anyone who
cares about books at all should purchase a device that has native epub support
and a good epub renderer. (I.e., not Adobe Digital Editions.) Kobo is a very
good option that ticks those boxes, though other alternatives exist. The
native iOS Books app on iPad is probably the top tier of native epub renderers
though that's obviously not an eink option.

~~~
amoe_
Is it possible to satisfy these criteria with non-Kindle ebook options?

* Good book selection, including more obscure and older books.

* Highlighting and notes automatically get backed up somewhere off-device.

* Paperwhite-sized backlit e-ink device.

I would really love to move off Kindle but AFAIK nothing else can satisfy
these yet.

~~~
acabal
Kobo. I have a Kobo Aura One from several years ago that does all of that.
Book selection in their store is subjective but you can side-load any epub
file very easily.

~~~
guitarbill
The Kobo Aura One seems discontinued. They have a Kobo Nia, but it looks seems
terrible (just like the entry-level Kindle). The Kobo Clara is $120 [0], so
that's the one going up against the Paperwhite.

I'm ashamed to admit I've never considered using a Kobo, but looking into it,
damn. The Kobo's lighting color is adjustable, so no more of that garish blue
light. And it supports ePUB files natively. The bezel seems a lot thinner. The
only feature it's lacking is it isn't waterproof.

Meanwhile, the Kobo Libra H2O is $170, and is waterproof, has page-turn
buttons, and a larger screen.

Since I usually strip DRM (getting harder to do), and even sometimes edit
eBooks to strip out the shite publishers add to it (like reading samples for
other books, I mean WTF), the ePUB support would be extremely useful.

[0]
[https://us.kobobooks.com/collections/ereaders/products/kobo-...](https://us.kobobooks.com/collections/ereaders/products/kobo-
clara-hd)

------
nomadrat
I even saw somewhere an article on topic "how to make money duplicating books
for Kindle". Was presented like it's something legitimate.

My 5 cents - reading a books on CS topics requires a lot of notes making and
working with this notes on kidnle is the worst.

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lovehashbrowns
Awesome, another scam to worry about on Kindle. Kindle is already worthless
for browsing technical books, anyway. So many of the titles on there tend to
be low-effort books that get higher placing than legitimate titles. The rest
of Amazon is fraught with scams. For example, I will never ever purchase
cologne, hair, or skincare products from Amazon because there are so many
fakes. Browse some of the reviews from people that experience things like hair
falling out or chemical burns, and then they find out they received a bootleg
product even when they use "Ships from Amazon." Amazon is getting increasingly
useless for shopping.

------
matsemann
> _There is literally a poorly formatted pirated version of my book on the
> Amazon Kindle store accumulating 1 and 2 star reviews for its poor
> formatting that count against all editions._

So not only do they commingle physical items so you never know what you get.
They also allow other people's products to affect your rating.

~~~
Shacklz
That struck me as especially egregious; even if the e-book-version was
legitimate, why on earth would anyone think that merging these reviews is a
good idea?

Some tech books are, in my opinion, _terrible_ for e-book without adjustments
and vice versa (e.g., description on left page and corresponding picture on
right page might work quite well in a paper book but not in an ebook where you
see only one page at a time); why would these ever be merged?

Is this a normal thing on Amazon? Speaking as someone who never ordered
anything from Amazon as it barely services my country

~~~
ThePadawan
I don't work at Amazon, but worked at a similar (European, national) retailer:

You really have to walk the line between ratings-per-SKU and aggregate ratings
sometimes.

In an ideal world, the reading experience of a Kindle book is the same as the
physical book. So someone might argue that ratings should be aggregated across
all version of the product. Would you expect different ratings for
hardcover/paperback versions of books? Probably not, at least assuming people
review the _content_ of the book, not its appearance.

Similarly, do you really want people to leave ratings on a black shirt in size
L, and that rating not apply to all sizes and colors?

I assume _someone_ at Amazon thinks about this, and the defaults (fashion =>
merge, books => merge, electronics => donotmerge) etc. do OK until complaints
come in. There's no profit in not being heavy-handed.

~~~
WoodenChair
> In an ideal world, the reading experience of a Kindle book is the same as
> the physical book. So someone might argue that ratings should be aggregated
> across all version of the product. Would you expect different ratings for
> hardcover/paperback versions of books? Probably not, at least assuming
> people review the content of the book, not its appearance.

Right, the issue though is that there is a much larger gulf between the eBook
and print book than there is between the paperback and hardcover. And the
delivery mechanism can greatly affect your enjoyment of the book. It's about
more than just appearance. Source code in particular, does not often work well
on a Kindle's tiny screen.

~~~
ghaff
Although maybe it does if you read it on a full-size tablet. In general, I
mostly avoid buying books I know aren't 95% text in Kindle format unless
they're very cheap or are from a known publisher for things like guidebooks.
They can work well but it's definitely hit or miss. (I also just don't like
ebooks for certain types of references where I want to stick post-its etc.)

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geogra4
I've been purchasing pc parts from ebay and honestly I've found it at least as
reliable and with better prices to boot.

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ffpip
How is Amazon allowed to advertise Kindle so much beside every book on the
website? Isn't it anti competitive?

Whenever you click on a book, it defaults to the Kindle version. When you
change it to the paperback edition, you are faced with banners on all 4 sides
saying 'Kindle is good, fast and easy', etc etc

~~~
DharmaPolice
Probably but you're on their site at this stage, buying from them. Yes, they
are pushing you to a product that (I assume) has a margin higher profit
margin, but this is not like a neutral product comparison site.

