To cash in on Kindle Unlimited, a cabal of authors gamed Amazon’s algorithm
From the article:<p><i>Valderrama allegedly said that she organized newsletter swaps, in which authors would promote each other’s books to their respective mailing lists.</i><p>Funnily enough, I&#x27;ve seen this same behavior from developers, freelancers, and authors who are &quot;internet famous&quot; on HN and Reddit. I&#x27;ve signed up for quite a few newsletters from these people because they often provide useful information.<p>But since I signed up for so many, I started noticing that fairly often, they&#x27;d recommend each others&#x27; products. I realize it&#x27;s entirely possible that these endorsements are authentic, but after a while, it starts to look like it&#x27;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&#x27;t really authentic, but is instead more of a quid pro quo in exchange for a reciprocal recommendation.<p>And it&#x27;s possible that I&#x27;m completely wrong and just imagining all of this. It&#x27;s just one of my pet peeves, so perhaps I&#x27;m exaggerating how prevalent it is. And don&#x27;t even get me started on developers who have resorted to hokey  long-form sales copy to sell their books and services... :)