Investigation finds that books dominating Amazon's search results on COVID-19 are often plagiarized from news outlets, with authors lacking verifiable IDs
and promise — of instant Amazon books in the time of coronavirus Louise Matsakis / Wired : Amazon Quietly Removes Some Dubious Coronavirus Books David Covucci / The Daily Dot : Amazon ebooks about coronavirus are flooding the market—and they're entirely unvetted Tweets: Dan Gillmor / @dangillmor : Amazon, please shut these scammers down. Journalists, please unveil them so they are reviled as they deserve to be. https://twitter.com/... Alexandra S. Levine / @ali_lev : Some of Amazon's top books on coronavirus were plagiarized from deeply-reported stories by NBC, The Guardian and other news outlets: https://www.nbcnews.com/... Zoe York / @zoeyorkwrites : Meanwhile, instead of dealing with stuff like this, Amazon is quietly rolling out a feature where readers can critique our plots. https://twitter.com/... Beverly Jenkins / @authormsbev : Grifters gonna grift. *sigh* https://twitter.com/... Steve Mullis / @stevemullis : An incredible grift happening on Amazon. Great reporting from @oneunderscore__ . https://twitter.com/... Olivier Knox / @oknox : Oh. My. Lord. https://twitter.com/... Peter W. Singer / @peterwsinger : This is both fascinating (and a tip of the hat to these fraudsters), but also disappointing illustration of how the platforms still shirk from the most basic policing of their platforms to protect their customers...and now the wider public #likewar https://twitter.com/... Mike Beauvais / @mikebeauvais : Dismayed to discover that Dr. Lamont Wang isn't a real person. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Hamza Shaban / @hshaban : The White House met with reps from big tech companies today to discuss responses to the coronavirus. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Meanwhile, let's check in with what's happening on their platforms... https://twitter.com/... Brandy Zadrozny / @brandyzadrozny : This thread is a real journey https://twitter.com/... Max Temkin / @maxtemkin : “capitalism is the most efficient means of allocating resources” https://twitter.com/... Ben Collins / @oneunderscore__ : Gotta admit, I was really sucked into the top-ranking Amazon ebook “Coronavirus Go Back to Dry Places.” “The question is will the medical experts and governments openly reveal his sacred name and take the time to search after him to get the cure?” https://twitter.com/... Ben Collins / @oneunderscore__ : I also really enjoyed this top search result for “coronavirus” on Amazon by Dr. Kashif Saeed. It's “everything you need to know” (20 pages of plagiarized news articles), under the name of a man who is alternately an SEO expert and a bovine veterinarian who spells it “buffallo.” https://twitter.com/... Ben Collins / @oneunderscore__ : An extremely similar kind of scam took over the romance ebook industry a few years ago. Here's a little bit about that from 2018. Scammers have pivoted to coronavirus ebooks, because that's where the money is. https://www.theverge.com/... Claire Atkinson / @claireatki : Author rips off NBC News journalism, packages it as a coronavirus advice book, zooms to top of Amazon charts. https://twitter.com/... Richard Madan / @richardmadan : From one of the best selling #coronavirus books on Amazon: “The first two chapters were lifted verbatim from NBC News stories .... the remainder of the book is plagiarized verbatim from articles on http://chinalawblog.com/ and The Guardian” https://twitter.com/... Patrick Claybon / @patrickclaybon : can scammers take like, a day off? https://twitter.com/... Charlie Thaxton / @cthaxton7 : Amazon's role in the general dis/misinformation crisis bears more attention. https://twitter.com/... Ben Collins / @oneunderscore__ : The “books” at the top of coronavirus searches on Amazon are collections of verbatim articles from across the web. The top result was a combo of articles from http://nbcnews.com/ and a blog from Nancy's Cleaning Services, a small housekeeping company. https://www.nbcnews.com/... Ben Collins / @oneunderscore__ : NEW from me: At the very top of Amazon search results for “coronavirus” — well above Clorox Wipes or Purell or info by actual doctors — are books by “Ramond Moroe,” “Sarah Wisconsin” and “Richard J. Baily.” But... do any of these people actually exist? https://www.nbcnews.com/... Ken Layne / @kenlayne : “Sarah Wisconsin” is my new pen name for Kindle historic-romance novels. Please buy “Love In the Time of Coronavirus.” https://twitter.com/... Ben Collins / @oneunderscore__ : Amazon took down some of the books at the top of their search for “coronavirus” products after we reached out. But search results are still littered with fake coronavirus books by imaginary people, well above tips from actual doctors or useful products. https://www.nbcnews.com/... Ben Collins / @oneunderscore__ : The top of Amazon's sitewide “coronavirus” search results were books with titles like “Sheild (sic) Against Corona-Virus: The Best Guide Ever (2020).” They're not bad, because they're entirely plagiarized. But many are written by imaginary people. https://www.nbcnews.com/... Ben Collins / @oneunderscore__ : “Richard J. Baily's” ebook was the top search result on a sitewide search for “coronavirus” on Amazon yesterday. Baily, “Gerald Lim Wang” and a few other pseudonyms appear to be the same scammer, publishing verbatim news articles as ebooks for cash. https://www.nbcnews.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The plagiarism finding extends a pattern already documented on Amazon: the company had begun flagging counterfeit books sold on its store as a material risk in SEC filings, and Wired had earlier shown how keyword voids and paid promotions can push misinformation into top results for health queries. What is new here is the mechanism — coronavirus ebooks assembled from reporting by NBC, The Guardian and other outlets, published under unverifiable author names, outranking authoritative sources at the exact moment demand spiked.
Amazon's response so far has been quiet removal of some titles after journalists exposed them, not a change to how Kindle books are vetted — which leaves the underlying publishing pipeline untouched.
First-order effects
- Amazon has quietly pulled some of the flagged coronavirus ebooks, but only those named in reporting — the rest of the unvetted catalog remains searchable and on sale.
- News outlets whose deeply-reported stories were copied lose traffic and licensing control, with their work repackaged by anonymous authors who capture the sales.
Second-order effects
- Legitimate health publishers and authors now compete in coronavirus search results against zero-cost plagiarized listings, pressuring Amazon to add identity verification or provenance checks to Kindle publishing that it has resisted applying marketplace-wide.
- The episode hands regulators and advertisers a concrete case that book retailing carries the same misinformation exposure as social feeds, raising the cost of Amazon's 'we're just a retailer' positioning.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, distribution platforms beyond social media — ebook stores, and per related coverage podcast apps like Apple and Spotify that have largely escaped scrutiny over COVID misinformation — will face converging pressure to verify both content provenance and publisher identity.
- Self-serve publishing at scale may force a split between verified-authority surfaces (health, news) and open marketplaces, changing how search results are ranked for high-stakes queries.
The trend: Platform intermediaries outside social media — retail, ebooks, podcasts — are being pulled into the same content-integrity accountability regime that social networks faced first.