For John, BLUF: Not everything Amazon sells is good value for money.
About a year ago my wife decided we would take a Fiction Writing Course at UMass Lowell Continuing Ed. Good pick. Among other items, I wrote a short story on Exercise ABLE ARCHER 83, which you can look up on Wikipedia.
So, when a classmate from the course recently mentioned that there was a book out on ABLE ARCHER, I went to Amazon and ordered it. The cost was $19.95. Didn't seem unreasonable.
What a ripoff. The authors, Messrs Jesse Russell and Ronald Cohn copied the above mentioned Wikipedia article, plus Wikipedia articles on NATO, the Soviet RYAN missile warning system and the United States. There are also Wikipedia references and licenses.
So, I basically spent a Double Sawbuck for a nicely printed trade sized version of a couple of Wikipedia articles. But, it is Caveat emptor. I failed to read the fine print on the Amazon page.
So, beware those authors and their house, Bookvika Publishing!
Regards — Cliff
2 comments:
This is interesting. E-publishing definitely opens the door wider for people looking to write (or produce other creative ventures) but the same door swings open just as wide for scammers.
The people putting this out must've known it was crap, but they're banking on enough people plunking down the bucks to turn a sweet profit. Not exactly high-minded stuff, and it is a good warning about buying similar products from similar sources.
I've been burned a couple times by very cheap iPhone apps. One that was pretty deceptive said it was a portal to radio stations around the world (pretty cool, eh?) but when I bought it for $0.99 or $1.99 (below most people's 'I won't think twice' threshold) I learned it was just a LIST of international radio stations. Any dope could've just googled that.
I wasn't the only one fooled...I later looked it up and found complaints from people who went through the same process...but to the makers, you just need enough people to make that *little* transaction, and soon you're talking about real money.
Oh, and another point...kudos for writing this.
Here's why: Most scams, ripoffs, cybercrimes, etc. are underreported. I've seen some stuff suggesting it's a 17% difference (reported v. actual) but then again how would the writers of that study know? ;-)
The simple phenomenon w/this stuff is that you don't want to report it b/c you risk looking like a dope.
A major law firm got reeled in by a Nigerian e-mail scam (SERIOUSLY!) which involved a bogus check that looked so good that a major US bank rogered off on it.
One issue: the reputational damage to that firm from admitting they got taken in by a Nigerian e-mail scam is worse than the dollar cost of the scam.
Post a Comment