{"id":30979,"date":"2026-08-13T20:25:29","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T14:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.in\/blog\/?p=30979"},"modified":"2026-08-13T20:25:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T14:55:29","slug":"ai-slop-books-on-amazon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.in\/blog\/ai-slop-books-on-amazon\/30979\/","title":{"rendered":"Into the rabbit hole: AI slop is flooding Amazon"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent article in The Atlantic ran under the blunt headline, The End of Reading Is Here<\/em><\/a>. According to the piece, research from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) found that fewer than 50% of American adults read even a single book in 2022, and only 38% read a novel or short story.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the U.S. book market keeps breaking its own publishing records year after year: in 2025, for instance, the number of new titles topped four million<\/a> \u2014 up a third from 2024. A huge chunk of that, 3.5 million titles, came from self-publishing, and one of its most powerful engines is Amazon\u2019s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).<\/p>\n

My theory on this mismatch in trends: nobody\u2019s reading books anymore because everyone\u2019s too busy writing them. Joking aside, if there\u2019s still a reader left out there, they\u2019ve probably already guessed where I\u2019m going with this: the all-powerful AI. Not long ago, a New York Times tech journalist was startled to find<\/a> her own biography on Amazon\u00a0\u2014 and one quick look confirmed it had been written by AI. Digging deeper into the world of AI book publishing, she stumbled onto the work of an extraordinarily prolific retired cybersecurity consultant. What happened next\u00a0\u2014 and where to find reliable information in the age of AI\u00a0\u2014 is what this post is about.<\/p>\n

Backstory: how a journalist chased the White Rabbit and fell down the hole<\/h2>\n

Let\u2019s start from the beginning. In the summer of 2026, New York Times tech journalist, Kashmir Hill, learned from an acquaintance that a biography about her had been published on Amazon a year earlier. It was titled The Biography of Kashmir Hill: The New York Times Technology Journalist Who Exposed Clearview AI, Challenged Big Tech and Redefined Privacy in the Digital Age<\/em>. And she was more than stunned since nobody had ever reached out to her, or to anyone she knew, to research the book.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it\u2026\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The author of record was one John Crane Miller, and the photo on his Amazon page turned out to be a generic stock image of a white man: the kind that shows up all over the internet. Hill couldn\u2019t find a shred of personal detail or contact information for him. But digging deeper into his Amazon profile turned up something else: in a single week in the summer of 2025, he had published biographies not just of Hill, but of nine other American journalists. Even the most trusting reader would find it hard to believe a literary genius could produce this kind of staggering output without a little robotic help.<\/p>\n

\"Kashmir<\/a>

The AI-generated biography of journalist Kashmir Hill, which she stumbled across by accident on Amazon. Source <\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

And yet the hardcover of Kashmir Hill\u2019s biography cost a full US$26.99\u00a0\u2014 despite running to just 90 pages. After reading it, Hill learned a whole slew of \u201cfacts\u201d about herself she\u2019d never known \u2014 including a detailed description of her coffee-making ritual (which, as the journalist notes, is actually her husband\u2019s duty). Mr. Miller even claimed in the text to have read Kashmir Hill\u2019s childhood diary.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hill had no luck tracking down the author of her biography. She left a comment on the book\u2019s Amazon page asking him to get in touch. Nobody wrote back\u00a0\u2014 and not long after, every book under John Crane Miller\u2019s profile vanished.<\/p>\n

But that gave her a lead on several other AI authors on Amazon. In particular, she came across a certain Bill Johns, whose author page listed a staggering 445 books<\/em><\/strong>. Not expecting much to come of it, she asked Johns if he\u2019d be willing to do an interview\u00a0\u2014 and was more than a little surprised when he agreed. It was probably right around then that Kashmir Hill\u2019s investigation turned into a genuine trip down the AI rabbit hole\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cIn another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bill\u2019s AI-dventures in Wonderland<\/h2>\n

Bill Johns retired in 2024, having spent his career as a cybersecurity consultant. In 2025, he decided to experiment with ChatGPT and, over the course of a couple of weeks, used it to generate his first book. It covered a cybersecurity topic\u00a0\u2014 specifically, the history of hacking\u00a0\u2014 and went out under the wildly original title Ghosts in the Machine<\/em><\/a>. Johns sold only a couple of copies, but that didn\u2019t stop him from generating another 444 books<\/a> over the following year.<\/p>\n

\"445<\/a>

Bill Johns\u2019s Amazon author page. In a single year he published 445 books \u2014 on everything from cybersecurity and\u2026 bridges to sports, biography, and philosophy. Source <\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

That impressive number includes, for instance, a 13-book cybersecurity series<\/a>, which, alongside the aforementioned history of hacking, contains the following titles:<\/p>\n