In short: horrible.

I know this won't be new to most of you, but I wanted to share an anecdote (and a rant!)

I have a friend who has brain cancer. I went to Amazon searching for books on the subject and I typed ‘brain cancer’ in the search (books) field. What did I find?

Amazon UK

As you scroll down page 1 of the search results, you find examples of “brain cancer notebook” or “brain cancer journal”. Empty notebooks with nothing to do with the subject.

Amazon US

Same search term. The search results were even worse. The “no content” ranked even higher on the first page of search page.

Here is a screenshot of the search results for Amazon UK and US: https://i.postimg.cc/JRDkSGRK/amazon-book-search.jpg

Try an Amazon book search for “Ukraine war” on Amazon UK and US and already the search results are populated with “Ukraine war” blank notebooks seizing the opportunity to profit from war (these blank notebooks are not donating to charities, they are simply seizing on keyword searches).

The reason so many of these "no content" notebooks pollute the books category is because of Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) service: a print-on-demand service. It has opened the flood gates to “low content” or “no content” journals and notebooks which allows "creators" publish hundreds of notebook titles. These are simply empty, lined or blank print-on-demand notebooks. Amazon includes these in book search results rather than confine these items to it’s own search category. You can find hundreds of YouTube videos on how to publish “no content” notebooks via KDP and how to game Amazon search results to rank higher.

I know Amazon simply doesn’t care, but I had to rant. I might be overreacting by the results I saw and I won’t be offended if you say so :-)

user:	wrthfl
created:	April 15, 2021
karma:	26