Go on Amazon UK and search for books by "Anett Muller", no umlaut. A couple of dozen listings, everything shipped and sold by Amazon, everything an obvious fake. I reported the listings when they appeared, almost a year ago, and Amazon did nothing.
Judging by how a dozen titles were dumped onto the store on a single day, and the highly specific yet disparate subject matter there are probably thousands of 'authors' like this. Some have hundreds of five-star reviews. In a few minutes I I identified a whole bunch of them: "Chillout Note Books", "Kim Karandash", "Steve Oneli", "Karolina Mendez", "Kai Halson", "TKH Team Publisher", "Dwayn Clarkes", "FỌRT-NITE Coloring"
Some look like they're using homoglyph attacks to evade detection, which is pretty sad given how trivial that should be to bypass. Given how many obvious fakes I could find in a short time with no special tools, it's also probable that there's even more less-obvious fakes out there.
So yeah, "sold and shipped by Amazon" is essentially meaningless as a badge of authenticity.
> Go on Amazon UK and search for books by "Anett Muller", no umlaut. A couple of dozen listings, everything shipped and sold by Amazon, everything an obvious fake
How are they obvious fakes? What is there in the product pages to indicate they are fake?
I see they're dispatched and sold by Amazon and I got no other information to tell those are fake. How do you know?
Did you even read the listing? This is the fakest fake that ever faked. Why does this "independently published" Berserk colouring book make no reference to the original author, the Japanese publisher of the original or the English publisher? The description reads like a totally generic description of a children's colouring book, and makes multiple references to "relaxation" and "stress reduction", and being for "kids" with "small hands". This is a Berserk colouring book. You know, the manga series notorious for featuring extreme violence, psychological horror and sexual content. Nothing in it is relaxing or remotely suitable for children.
The pattern continues with the other listings, why does a Fortnite colouring book spell "Fortnite" wrong? Twice, and differently each time using an unlikely homoglyph? Why isn't it being listed on the Epic Games Amazon store with the other Fortnite books? All of which mention being "official" when this one doesn't. Why does the description claim "unique" and "hand drawn" art yet the preview show clearly automatically vectorised screenshots or key visuals? And I don't even play Fortnite, so this isn't even some deep insider knowledge.
Someone clearly has a script to pull images of trending IPs from a search engine, vectorise them and then sell them as 'colouring books' on Amazon through PoD with generic descriptions. There's similar rackets with notebooks, t-shirts, mouse mats and mugs through other PoD services.
Judging by how a dozen titles were dumped onto the store on a single day, and the highly specific yet disparate subject matter there are probably thousands of 'authors' like this. Some have hundreds of five-star reviews. In a few minutes I I identified a whole bunch of them: "Chillout Note Books", "Kim Karandash", "Steve Oneli", "Karolina Mendez", "Kai Halson", "TKH Team Publisher", "Dwayn Clarkes", "FỌRT-NITE Coloring"
Some look like they're using homoglyph attacks to evade detection, which is pretty sad given how trivial that should be to bypass. Given how many obvious fakes I could find in a short time with no special tools, it's also probable that there's even more less-obvious fakes out there.
So yeah, "sold and shipped by Amazon" is essentially meaningless as a badge of authenticity.