> At the very least, if you look at my author profile on Amazon, these junk books don’t appear.
It sounds like maybe this is not happening? If they are just appearing under the search for “AuthorName” I am not sure there really is a problem with Amazon’s system.
IANAL, perhaps Amazon still has some liability if an author is using a fraudulent pen name for books they submit.
Amazon's software is odd here. If I click on the name on a real Jane Friedman book, it does not include the fake books... But this is not commutative. If I click on the name on a fake Jane Friedman book, it lists out a mix of real and fake books.
For example, this is a blank notebook on Amazon Canada that a seller has stuck her all-lowercase name upon. If I click the author name on the listing, I'm taken to an author search page that intermingles it with her real books.[1]
That strongly implies Amazon asserting they're one and the same.
Knowing that in the reverse this does not hold tells me that this us probably an unconsidered edge-case and not intentional design. But still, Amazon is, in that search, saying "oh you're looking for more jane friedman (lowercase) here's Jane Friedman (title case)" which implies they're the same person.
I'd call that a software bug... but now that Friedman has informed them, they can't plead ignorance of the bug.
Good analysis. It seems in the inauthentic case on the product page they are just linking “jane friedman” to a search page for that term. Wonder if there is a way of setting up a merchant account with just a label/DBA vs an extra step of claiming an author account.
yeah I think what you really need is for Amazon to have a Wikipedia style 'disambiguation' page. Then they can link them but make it obvious that they're two (or more) different people and results for person A aren't related to person B:
> Showing 1-1 books for Dr Spock:
> * Baby and Child Care
>
> Search instead for:
>
> * Mr Spock (10 albums)
It sounds like maybe this is not happening? If they are just appearing under the search for “AuthorName” I am not sure there really is a problem with Amazon’s system.
IANAL, perhaps Amazon still has some liability if an author is using a fraudulent pen name for books they submit.