My understanding is that romance/porn is mostly written by LLMs at this point. Its all just churned out crap to make a quick buck on Amazon. My elderly mother reads this genre endlessly and frequently wonders if there are editors at all!
"mostly written by LLMs... on Amazon" Do you mean in e-books, print books, or subscription based sites, or some/all of those? I think you only mean e-books, on Amazon. Then if people object to that, just avoid e-books on Amazon. Stay with human-curated.
The deal with Amazon is you pay a fixed monthly subscription fee to read an umlimited amount of crap on your Kindle (RMS calls that device a Swindle). So if you have some favorite authors or get recommendations from a subreddit or something, you can keep your reading appetite satiated without buying individual titles. Particularly, that lets you DNF (do not finish) a work without incurring expense, if you read a few pages and decide not to continue.
The plan involved is called Kindle Unlimited and its terms for authors are quite onerous imho, but monopolies etc.
If anyone needs an alternative: the current Kobo lineup is great. You can buy ebooks directly through the Kobo store, and they work well. And if you want to tinker with the OS, you can.
> Then if people object to that, just avoid e-books on Amazon. Stay with human-curated.
What does being an ebook have to do with it? You want to avoid self-published books. The typical self-published book is much worse than nothing. But most books are available as ebooks.
The only way most people are going to encounter self-published (e-)books being marketed to them is Kindle (Unlimited) or online stores. Brick-and-mortar stores wouldn't do this, it wouldn't even economically make sense to carry the stuff and it would damage their reputation.
Do us a favor and don't misrepresent what I say. "Self-published author" connotes no-name author (or anonymous/pseudonymous) with no publishing history or reputation; whereas Neil Gaiman is already reputable and has sold 40+ million books.
Statistically, the average e-book that Amazon tries to advertise to you is far more likely to be the former than the letter. And that was before the current wave of "pay to learn our system to get rich publishing e-books".
I even have friends who tried it for a while. They hardly made any money.
> Do us a favor and don't misrepresent what I say.
Would you mind doing me the same favor, of not misrepresenting what you say?
> "Self-published" connotes no-name author (or anonymous/pseudonymous) with no publishing history or reputation; whereas Neil Gaiman is already reputable and has sold 40 million books.
...is this relevant to something you've said? I'm the only one so far who's said something about self-published books. Your recommendation was to avoid ebooks. That recommendation was stupid.
> Statistically, the average e-book that Amazon tries to advertise to you is far more likely to be the former than the letter.
Well, I just opened the Amazon front page. These are the ebooks they're advertising to me:
1. The Summer Dragon, Todd Lockwood. Publisher: DAW
2. Beren and Lúthien, J.R.R. Tolkien (and Christopher Tolkien). Publisher: William Morrow (= HarperCollins)
3. Daughter of the Empire, Raymond Feist (and Janny Wurts). Publisher: Spectra (= Penguin)
4. The Grace of Kings, Ken Liu. Publisher: Saga Press (= Simon & Schuster)
5. An Inheritance of Ash & Blood, Jamie Edmundson. Publisher: Rarn, which does appear to be Jamie Edmundson's personal publishing company. This could fairly be considered self-published. It's also available on Kindle Unlimited, which is a red flag. The author appears to be fairly prolific, so he's not exactly lacking a publishing history.
6. Heir of Ra, M. Sasinowski. Publisher: Kingsmill Press. This is another publisher that appears to be a vehicle for a single author. Probably self-published. This book is at pains to point out the many awards it's won, probably because it's self-published.
7. The Anvil, Christopher Coates. Publisher: Next Chapter, which purports to "combine the professionalism and quality of traditional publishing with the creative freedom of independent publishing". They review your work before publishing it; not self-published.
8. The Book That Wouldn't Burn, Mark Lawrence. Publisher: Ace
That concludes the front page. There are five books from major publishers, one from a minor publisher, and two most likely self-published. The biggest names appearing are J.R.R. Tolkien and Raymond Feist. Taking author quality into account, you appear to be roughly as likely to get Neil Gaiman as you are to get anything self-published. Ignoring it, you're far more likely to get something reputable than to get trash.
Unless, of course, you want to read trash, in which case Amazon's recommendations will probably lean that way.
No, we were talking specifically about things "mostly written by LLMs... on Amazon" in the ancestor comment by Henchman21 ("My understanding is that romance/porn is mostly written by LLMs at this point.")
Given that we're talking about the set of those, allow that it's pretty obvious to recognize a book by a known author vs an LLM based simply on the title, cover, author bio or lack of, publisher and whether they have links/catalog to any prior books, or a total absence of.
Those are going to skew disproportionately towards e-books and away from paper books. And you can "look inside" to get an idea of their quality. Which in my experience was often bad. So that recommendation wasn't at all stupid.
As to what Amazon recommends you, noone said frontpage, Henchman21 was talking about romance/porn, and as for me I use keyword searches. I see lots of obscure titles from unknown authors ranked above titles I know are reliable.
* EXAMPLE: Search Kindle Store for "guide visit Philippines"
The #1 hit is not any legit guide, but an obscure 32pp Kindle book by an unknown Portuguese(?) author averaging 3/5 stars, published way back in 2015 (which in itself would be a fail for a travel guide with timely information). I clicked Look inside and confirm it's garbage, really basic, possibly not written by a human.
#2 is a $9.99 title by an unknown Kindle author who managed to be amazingly prolific in the month of Dec 2024 alone, publishing "The Essential Philippines Travel Guide 2025: Things to know before visiting, Best Attractions, Best Hidden Gems, Antiquated Cultures, Culinary Delights, Travel budget, itineraries & Staying Safe"
but then you find in Dec 2024 she also wrote "The Essential XX Travel Guide 2025: ..." for XX = {Philippines, Paris, Malta, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Norway, New Zealand, Berlin, Valencia, Seoul, Serbia, Vietnam, Florida, Costa-Rica, Germany... Sedona AZ, and many more...} Did she visit all these countries in 2024? ever? ("What Makes This Book Unique?
Written by a Team of Philippines Experts: Crafted by those who know the Philippines inside and out, ensuring accurate and authentic recommendations."... "What Makes This Book Unique?
Written by a Team of Morocco Experts: Trust in the expertise of seasoned travelers and locals who know the country inside out... Regularly Updated: Enjoy the latest insights for 2025 and beyond... Impressive.)
The #4 hit is another KindleUnlimited 26pp "Visiting the Philippines as a Christian: Guide to Customs and Worship". Not even a relevant search result.
The #5 hit is "CultureShock! Philippines", the first relevant quality result (although it's a (superb) cultural guide rather than a practical visitor how-to-get-around guide). But it's the only decent item in all these results.
#7 is "Palau Travel Guide 2025: ..." (wrong country) and #10 is "BALI FOR TRAVELERS. The total guide" (wrong country).
Statistically, the average Kindle e-book that Amazon tries to advertise to you for "guide visit Philippines" is far more likely to be the former than the letter. Exactly what I said.
Lonely Planet Philippines doesn't even show up anywhere in the results(!) It should be in the top-3. (Bizarrely, if you know it's the result you want and search for that exact title "Lonely Planet Philippines", it shows up in all its editions.)
(Also: I almost never look for e-books on Amazon, so their A9 search results for me are going to have worse personalization than for you. Try repeating your own search logged out or incognito and see if doesn't get worse. (Search, not frontpage))
And as to "the current wave of "pay to learn our system to get rich publishing e-books [on Amazon]"" ad content I mentioned, I get an obscene amount of those ads on YouTube, for e-publishers that target Amazon. Which helps explain the above results.
