出版与作家生涯2018theverge.com
为了在 Kindle Unlimited 套利，一群作者联手玩弄了亚马逊算法
To cash in on Kindle Unlimited, a cabal of authors gamed Amazon’s algorithm
导读
一篇关于“Cockygate”的报道揭露了部分作者组织邮件互换、互推作品，操控 Kindle Unlimited 推荐算法以获取收入。事件背后是算法时代营销信任与内容质量的冲突，提醒写作者警惕投机式推广，回归作品本身。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
不要参与邮件列表互换等互推营销，读者一旦察觉推荐只是利益交换，信任就无法挽回。
- 02
平台推荐算法（如 Kindle、Steam）质量有限，主动经营自己的读者社群和直接触达渠道比依赖算法更可靠。
- 03
创作优先考虑内容价值而不是迎合算法，否则整个行业会陷入逐底竞争，最终损害所有人。
- 04
在宣传自己作品时保持透明和真实，宁可少一些背书也不要让读者觉得你满口营销话术。
HN 评论精选
作者之间互推邮件列表表面上像合作，久了会让读者怀疑推荐只是利益交换，写作者应警惕这种营销套路。
文章里说，Valderrama 被指控组织“邮件列表互换”，作者们互相在各自的邮件订阅中推广对方的书。有趣的是，我在开发者、自由职业者以及 HN 和 Reddit 上“网络红人”作者身上也见过同样行为。我订过不少这类人的邮件，因为他们确实常提供有用信息。但因为我订的太多，开始注意到他们常常互相推荐产品。我明白这些背书也有可能是真诚的，但时间一长，看起来就像一个在会议上认识、然后约定彼此在邮件中交叉推广的互联群体。于是每个推荐都显得不真实，更像是一种换取对方推荐的对等交易。而且有可能我完全错了，只是自己胡思乱想。这不过是我的一个雷点，也许我夸大了它的普遍性。更别提那些写作者竟然用老套的长篇销售文案来卖自己的书和服务了……:)
rpeden查看英文原文
From the article: Valderrama allegedly said that she organized newsletter swaps, in which authors would promote each other’s books to their respective mailing lists. Funnily enough, I've seen this same behavior from developers, freelancers, and authors who are "internet famous" on HN and Reddit. I've signed up for quite a few newsletters from these people because they often provide useful information. But since I signed up for so many, I started noticing that fairly often, they'd recommend each others' products. I realize it's entirely possible that these endorsements are authentic, but after a while, it starts to look like it's an interconnected web of people that met at conferences and agreed to cross-promote each each other on their respective newsletters. And so it ends up feeling like each recommendation isn't really authentic, but is instead more of a quid pro quo in exchange for a reciprocal recommendation. And it's possible that I'm completely wrong and just imagining all of this. It's just one of my pet peeves, so perhaps I'm exaggerating how prevalent it is. And don't even get me started on developers who have resorted to hokey long-form sales copy to sell their books and services... :)
平台必须预判并封堵算法被钻空子的方式，写作者也不应存侥幸心理。
如果你运营一个平台，而它的算法能被“合作伙伴”为了获利而操纵，损害你或用户利益，那你应该预料到它正在或将会被操纵。设计规模化技术产品的一个重要部分是坐下来预判各种激励作弊和钻空子的方式，然后把漏洞当作 bug 来修补。这就像做一次安全审计，只不过攻击者是你的合作伙伴而非黑客。最好通过技术手段修复；如果不行，也必须在服务条款中明确不可接受的行为。即使有些行为你无法规模化执行（比如需要人工审核），你仍然需要有政策，以便针对情节严重的个案进行单独执法。否则你只能在会上说：“我们知道他们在钻空子，但我们无能为力，因为这不违规！”
ryandrake查看英文原文
If you run a platform and its algorithms can be gamed by “partners” for profit at your’s or the user’s expense you should expect that it is or will be gamed. An important part of designing tech products that scale is sitting down and anticipating all the various ways you are incentivizing cheating and gaming, and then closing the holes as bugs. It’s like doing a security audit, with the attackers being your partners rather than hackers. It’s best to fix the gaming via technical means, but if you can’t, it’s still important to spell out unacceptable behavior in the terms of use. Even if it’s something you can’t enforce at scale (for instance: enforcement requires manual review by humans) you still need the policy so you can do one-off enforcements against egregious cases. Otherwise you sit around in these meetings going, “well we know they are gaming the system but we can’t do anything about it because it’s not against the rules!”
平台推荐算法很差，不能指望靠它被读者发现，创作者应主动走其他渠道。
Kindle 商店在发现好作品方面已经非常垃圾了，Unlimited 让它更糟——不过是更多掩盖真实价格、挤走优秀内容的营销废话。他们的推荐算法很烂，只有想找同一作者的作品时才算有点用。Steam 也有同样的问题，不过至少他们在尝试用各种方式解决。
guitarbill查看英文原文
The Kindle store is already garbage for any kind of discovery, and Unlimited makes it worse being just more marketing BS to hide the real price and displace good content. Their suggestion algorithms are terrible, and only really work if you want something from the same author. Steam has exactly the same problem, although ar least they‘re trying to solve it in various ways.
创作者若把赢过算法而非创作优质内容当目标，只会让行业整体变糟，这不是技术手段能解决的。
为了赢得算法而不是创造有价值内容的竞赛，继续迫使所有媒体（包括书籍）走上逐底竞争。我真的不觉得这是技术能解决的问题。
FussyZeus查看英文原文
The fight to win over algorithms instead of creating worthwhile content continues to compel all media, books included, in a race to the bottom. I really don't think this is a problem tech can solve.
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