Kindle Book Reviews Fool eBook Buyers

By Jason Boog 

joylandreview

While Stephen King only published a print version of Joyland earlier this year, a $2.99 Kindle edition book review written by “Nick Walton” has fooled digital book buyers on Amazon.

The book has been removed from the Kindle Store, but “Joyland (Hard Case Crime) by Stephen King, a review” had collected 72 one-star reviews–as many people thought they were buying a digital version of the King book. One reader explained:

Just like everyone else, I thought it was a King book. Disgusting by Amazon. They should monitor this. I was very upset.

Evil Wylie first posted about this digital book on Twitter.

We kept looking around, discovering that “Nick Walton” has published more than fifteen $2.99 book reviews of popular books on Amazon, following the same title strategy in the Kindle Store. These reviews have also been removed from the Kindle Store.

We did a little digital research, discovering a $20 job posting that may be the root of this particular series of book reviews. The online job poster was looking for a book review of King’s novel, but requested that the writing assignment “should have ‘reviewed by Nick Walton’ in small at the end.”

If you follow this Google search, you can see other job postings with the same “reviewed by Nick Walton” request. Here’s more from the Joyland book review job posting:

Hi, I am interested in hiring someone who can read and do a book review Stephen King’s book “Joyland” The review length will be 4-5 pages in total …

The applicant must have:
-Great academic writing skills.
-Familiarity with book reviews.
-Ability to create nice eye-catching cover page for book review, should have “reviewed by Nick Walton” in small at the end.
-You are good at initiating, and good at taking directions.
-Time frame 1 week (preferably)
-Price $20 -Possibility to work again on other projects if results are satisfactory.
-7 keywords, 7 words or terms people would use to find this book. -Upon submission review must be without spelling errors / errors in grammar.
-you understand EVERYTHING must be ORIGINAL and nothing can be copied as it can VIOLATE copyright laws and this is SERIOUS. The 4-5 pages must be all in your own words.
-You obtain and review the book yourself.

Simple format I am looking for:
1. 10 sentenced description of book in your own words
2. Overview Section
3. Review section / should state your option at the end of review and weather you recommend the book or what you would want people to know about it.
4. About the author I wish to preferably work with an native English speaker, perhaps a student.

Editor’s Note: This post has been updated as the story evolved.