Like so many others, I am a member of a book club. We began meeting online during the pandemic and we are still going!  Because we meet on Zoom, we can stay in touch even when some members are in Florida for the winter, which is great!

Well, last month we chose our next read, Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Greer. Greer won a Pulitzer Prize for his novel Less in 2018.  Villa Coco is his latest and was an instant bestseller.  I usually try to get books from my local library, but Villa Coco was so new and in demand that I was on a long waiting list. I decided to order a paperback copy of the novel from Jeff Bezo’s corner store, aka Amazon.

As we have all come to expect from Amazon, the book arrived promptly the next day and I quickly cracked it open and began to read.  Then I noticed something on the cover of the book. The cover art was the same, but at the bottom of the front cover, under Andrew Sean Greer’s name it didn’t say “Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less.”  Instead, it read “Translated by Hnefill Michaels.”

What?

I had seen the cover online. Who the heck was Hnefill Michaels and why would the English version of Villa Coco need translation?  Hmmmm.

The investigative reporter in me took over, and I asked the all-knowing Google to explain this to me.  My suspicions were proven correct. The Great and Powerful Google replied, “Yes, Amazon does sell fake, counterfeit, and unauthorized AI-generated copycat books.”

Ah, the joys of Artificial Intelligence!  Apparently book bootleggers have computer programs that can scrape the data from a book and then quickly print it on demand. In fact, on the last page of my book is printed the following: Made in United States/ North Haven, CT/ 12 September 2026.  So it was printed the day I ordered it!  Further, Google told me that “The name Hnefill Michaels belongs to a known counterfeit book operation.”

Amazon commingles its products, so bootleg copies of books can end up in the same bin as legitimate copies, or at least that’s the excuse they have been giving the public. 

I will say that after I did my due diligence, I contacted Amazon and told them I wanted a refund for the phony book they sent me.  They immediately said I would get a refund, and, by the way, I didn’t need to return the book!  Gee thanks.

After checking some online message boards, it seems like many people have fallen prey to bootleg books on Amazon. It’s rather ironic, given that good old Jeff started this whole online business selling books out of his garage way back in 1995.

As for me, I won’t be buying any more books from Amazon.  I’ll be going to my local bookstore or library in the future and supporting real publishers and real authors.  No more AI slop for me. Sorry, Hnefill.