So, youtube recommended this video to me, it's about the sleazy marketing of a particular upcoming YA novel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imVItEPHKPg
The marketing is absolutely sleazy. And the author is self-publishing. Of course.
But what gets me is how hilariously generic the book looks :
Would you believe it's about a heroine who has to go to a special school for smart people?
I said "Upcoming", but the video was a few weeks old, and the book is now out. So I checked out its Amazon reviews. Here's the first review :
@apLundell I watched like half. this is incredibly scammy. also if you're self publishing and using bots to right your own reviews I just kinda have to assume you used a bot to write the book as well
@Taweret This must be a fun time to be a publishing agent.
What a joy to read through a slush-pile of thousands of AI generated books.
Some of them will be from humans who genuinely think their idea is so good that even a bot-written book will impress everyone.
But a lot of them would just be bad-faith from start to finish.
I assume some people are setting up AI agents to just automatically email bot books to every agent they can.
@apLundell I mean using bots to review your own books is such a red flag for that. no one is going to believe you set up bots to review your book but then had integrity about actually writing it
@Taweret To be 100% fair, She might not be botting. Not directly anyway.
These reviews could all be coming from people hoping to win something in her sweepstakes.
@apLundell lol true
Oct 15, 2026, 3:05 AM@apLundell To be fair all books are about heroines that go to special schools for smart people