Downstream Hazards

Any published author will tell you that the work you put into writing a book doesn’t stop with the final edit. It also doesn’t stop with social posts, touring, or podcasts. In fact, publishing can contain downstream hazards. 

Before I released my memoir, Last Nerve, the publisher advised me to ask people to buy the book on the release day. Apparently, it’s important to get those Amazon purchases on pub day because, if all goes right, you can gain a “Best Seller” accolade from the shopping website.

Done and done. I created a newsletter, sent it out to 500 people, and asked folks to buy on pub day. They did, and my book became an Amazon best-seller overnight! Great, right? Wrong. Within a week of my release date, I typed my name into the Amazon search bar to check my reviews. Last Nerve was shining its bright red cover on the site, but so was another book: The Biography of Mindy Uhrlaub. On the cover was a back-and-white picture of someone that looked a little like my offspring if I had a baby with a young Janis Joplin. She wore a tailored black business suit – something I’ve never owned. She had a self-satisfied smile on her face, and she looked a little bitchy.

What the fuck?

I called my publisher, who consulted with her legal team. In the meantime, I investigated the Amazon site and realized that the entity that “wrote” the so-called biography shared the first two pages. I clicked on the sample to learn that I was born in Northern California. In a library, surrounded by books. Apparently, I’m also dying of ALS.

“What other lies are in here?” I thought.

With some additional clicking, I noted that the entity had “written” three other counterfeit books about new authors. Stunned, I Googled the so-called "creator” of my bogus biography. It wasn’t a person. It wasn’t even a company. This was an AI that someone created to scrape information from Amazon and profit from a fake book. And they even had the gall to charge three dollars more for their digital sham than I was asking for my paperback!

I emailed Amazon more than a dozen times and begged them to remove the fake listing. And when I called, I was greeted by an AI voice on the phone. 

No surprise there. 

Then I joined the Authors Guild of America, who seemed familiar with the growing number of cases of fraudulent AI biographies. They assured me that within a month, Amazon would take down the listing.

And it did. Luckily, nobody bought the fake biography, and no one reviewed it either. But I couldn’t help wondering, is it enough to write and promote my book? In the face of an AI future, will my work ever be done? In a world where AI can “write books,” from an Amazon listing, what’s even the point?

If you’re nearing your pub date, congratulations. And beware of Amazon, which can contain downstream hazards.