Johnson | Robot books

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Fake books pretending to be real books are selling on Amazon

By R.L.G. | NEW YORK

YESTERDAY I wrote, regarding Rosetta Stone's suit against Google,

It's hard to imagine a buyer being snookered into thinking he was buying Rosetta Stone when he was actually buying a (say) Living Language course.

I later got a summary of Rosetta Stone's legal complaint, which alleges that Google's behavior could in fact trick consumers into buying non-Rosetta Stone products. RS further alleges that Google knows this.

If you were sceptical—who could buy Roesetta Stoan thinking they were buying Rosetta Stone?—be sceptical no more. I learn today, via Geoff Pullum, that a fake book, "Fast and Slow Thinking" by a nonexistent Karl Daniels, is selling on Amazon to customers who think they are buying the excellent "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman. The fake book apparently simply culls some chunks of Wikipedia and pastes them into large type into a print-to-order book for the (extremely) unwary customer. The lack of blurbs, the 4 oz. weight, and the sales rank of 429,000-and-something did not stop a few from ordering this "book". More bizarre still, there are somehow 5 used copies for sale, one on offer for a bargain-basement $85.91.

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