My Fake Amazon ‘Workbook’ The $12.99 volume is attributed to me and probably generated by AI. And I apparently have no recourse to the company. By Warren Kozak
Shortly after my book “Waving Goodbye: Life After Loss” was published April 9, I noticed a companion volume for sale on Amazon for $12.99. Its title: “Workbook for Waving Goodbye By Warren Kozak: Absolute Guide to Living Your Life even After Loss.” I hadn’t written any such workbook, so I contacted my publisher, Anthony Ziccardi, at Post Hill Press. He already knew about it. “It’s the dark side of what’s happening with A.I. generated books on Amazon,” he told me in an email.
I wrote “Waving Goodbye” as a guide for grieving widows and widowers after my wife died in 2018 and I found little help from the books I was given. Many were written in an academic style used by psychologists and psychiatrists that I found impossible to read or understand—in part because the brain doesn’t function at its normal capacity after this kind of trauma. A line in Joan Didion’s memoir, “The Year of Magical Thinking,” has stuck with me: “After a year I could read headlines.”
For that reason, I wrote this book in plain English with short chapters, explaining what happened, what worked for me, and what didn’t work, so that people moving through grief would benefit from it. From the many reader emails I have received, it seems to have resonated with others who have lost a spouse. By contrast, the language in the companion workbook was neither clear nor academic. It was bizarre.
What do you get for $12.99? The introduction says: “THIS PLACE, WE TRULY WISH TO SEE YOU REACH SUCCESS!” That is the entirety of page 2. There’s another gem on page 3: “Get acquainted now that deceiving yourself is one of the most foolish things you can do. Try as much as possible to be honest and straight forward during your usage of this book.” Sage advice. The workbook is 36 pages long, although I was allowed to preview only through page 5. I assume the rest is equally erudite.
I might be missing something, but if this is an example of the coming artificial intelligence behemoth that is supposed to take over writing books, term papers, scripts and everything else in our lives, I think we can breathe easy.
Perhaps the workbook is something else altogether. It could have been produced in a backroom in China, which would explain the stilted translation. It reminds me of badly translated—and unwittingly amusing—food packaging I saw when I lived in Beijing in the mid-1980s. My favorite: “Wasabi Pea . . . and You!”
Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to get Amazon to take this workbook off its website. About the only thing the publisher and author can do is hit the link that says “Report an issue with this product or seller” and then hope Amazon removes it. Mr. Ziccardi warned me that “this works only occasionally.”
A recent NPR story told how journalist Kara Swisher was rightly annoyed when she discovered she was the subject of fake biographies for sale on Amazon. Ms. Swisher knows the CEO and sent him a blistering note. The offending books were removed.
I wrote a one-star review of the book, saying it’s a fraud and warning people not to buy it. As of this writing, Amazon hasn’t posted the review.
Although Amazon is a boon for writers in many respects—putting books a click away from potential readers—I miss small bookstores. I’m old enough to remember employees who actually read books. They also served as guardians of the gate. In a brick-and-mortar bookstore, a workbook like this one would have been quickly tossed in the garbage where it belongs.
Mr. Kozak is author of “Waving Goodbye: Life After Loss.”
Correction
An earlier version said that an Amazon spokeswoman hadn’t returned emails seeking comment. Because of a typo, those emails were sent to the wrong address.
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