Amazon is no stranger to scams, and this new one is one for the books (literally). There is an ongoing scam where people will take the book covers of official books, and paste them onto empty notebooks, according to Techradar.
This isn’t the only scam that’s been getting on authors’ nerves. Not too long back, there was a TikTok trend that led people to buy books, quickly read them, and then return them for a refund.
This next Amazon scam may lead you to buy the wrong book
We’re not sure how widespread this scam is, but there’s already pressure on Amazon to fix it. What will happen is the scammer will look for a popular selling book. At that point, they would take a picture of that book’s cover, and use it to publish their own copy.
However, that book won’t be a copy of the original. Instead, customers would be greeted by a completely empty notebook. What makes this worse is that the scammers would sell the books at a fraction of the price of the original books.
One author by the name of Rob Manuel posted several tweets about this scam. He even posted a video of one of these scam books and revealed that it’s completely empty. “Imagine your joy of getting that on Christmas Day”, he said before capping it off with some colorful language.
The account that he bought this book from is called Rachid Zrika. Fortunately, that account has been taken down. The account had other books such as Ballet of Lepers and Cat Lady. There’s no telling how much money this account made, but it’s not making money anymore.
It’s hard to say how many accounts out there are ripping off these authors’ books. What’s fortunate is that Amazon is aware of this issue, and hopefully, it’s taking action. As more authors are affected by this issue, we can expect them to contact Amazon and help end the chapter on this scam.