How an industry of ‘Amazon entrepreneurs’ pulled off the Internet’s craftiest catfishing scheme

“I feel like exposing this scam might even hurt my own sales,” he said.

Experts are more optimistic: Jane Friedman, a professor of digital publishing at the University of Virginia, describes catfish as an ongoing but “not that significant” threat. (“It increases the noise for everyone, sure,” she wrote by e-mail, “but for any author building a long-term career, it’s not hard to distinguish yourself from low-quality opportunists.”) Amazon, meanwhile, promises that it is weeding out deceptive accounts and their products.

From How an industry of ‘Amazon entrepreneurs’ pulled off the Internet’s craftiest catfishing scheme – The Washington Post