So, I pretty much dismiss anyone with this designation, but I helped a guy write a book. I think he had hired someone else to write this non-fiction book and they screwed it up, but maybe it was his. Since he knew there was some factual information wrong with it and I could see he had paid another freelancer, I really doubt he had written it, but I don't ask questions. Saying things like, "wow, this is a piece of garbage, I hope you didn't pay for it" and then later finding out he did write it is not the best way to get employers to like you.
I finished the fixing the book and he immediately hired me to write another.--this time I could write it with my own free will which is much easier. I love regular jobs that are relatively easy so I can focus on my own writing. However, during the course of writing the second book, I asked if he wanted an Author Bio at the end. And he sent me one. "Holly Berra is a mother and best-selling author..."
Hold on here!! I have never heard of Holly Berra, and I am writing her book... and basically wrote the good half of her last book... but although I clearly have an ego about my own work and feel it deserves to be a best-seller, I didn't touch the first half of the first book.
(I don't check Amazon best seller lists, but I am not and do not claim to be a best-seller. when I hit the Times list, then I might add that designation. It depends on if I feel I truly deserve it or not. If you want to go drive my sales up and purchase my books, though, to try to help me get there, I certainly won't complain. :) )
I did a quick check on Holly, and sure enough, for a brief day she had made it into the Amazon top 100 sales. I sighed and refused to add this detail in about Ms. Berra to her bio. My employer can do it later if he really wants to. If I have any future situations like this, I will do the same. I am okay with fabricating an entire fake author, I am not okay with then giving that author accolades he or she has not, in my opinion, earned.
There are many people, like this one, who claim the Amazon best selling list is just as valid as any other reviewed best selling list. This is false. Are there books on real best selling lists that do not deserve to be there because of self-promotion (i.e. they bought thousands of books to influence their sales enough to land them a spot on the New York Times or washington Post lists)? Of course. That does not make those lists less valid. That simply makes those authors devious and undeserving of their titles.
But Amazon is much easier to manipulate. Here is a great post about a guy who was also suspicious of best selling author claims and checked how hard it was to become an Amazon best-selling author. To do so, he wrote a book that had only a photo of his foot inside it, and became a best-selling Amazon author in only a few minutes. I do not recommend doing this and neither does he. The point this proves is that just as anyone can write a book and self-publish it, anyone can also be an Amazon best-seller, even if you hold that position for less than a day. Amazon does not review the books. They publish way too many (and 80% are simply garbage equivalent to click bait) to care. Their computers review everything, and their computers are not even programmed to distinguish between a poorly edited work and one with beautiful layout. Maybe some day they will realize that seeing how many misspelled words and grammatical errors are in the books people upload and preventing people with thousands of such errors from publishing, would actually help indie authors sell more books, but I doubt if at this point Amazon cares. The point is, if you see someone--anyone-- make the claim of being a best-selling author, ask them to prove it. If they send you an Amazon screenshot, run away.
No comments:
Post a Comment