Meaning of book stuffing | Babel Free

Definitions

The practice employed by some self-published authors of artificially inflating the length of their e-books by adding irrelevant content, and thus exploiting e-book platforms' algorithms to increase visibility, rankings, and royalties.

uncommon, uncountable

Examples

“This practice, known as book stuffing, is paired with a link⟳ at the start⟳ of the book encouraging readers to click for a bonus story or special message placed at the end⟳ of the book. If they do, Amazon counts the whole book as read⟳, even if they have⟳ skipped thousands of unread pages, and makes the maximum payout.”

“Amazon clearly wants to address Kindle Unlimited cheating: Their new guideline update⟳ follows an April arbitration case in which book stuffing was mentioned, setting a legal precedent against the practice. In order⟳ to truly quash book stuffing in the self-publishing community, however, Amazon will need⟳ to enforce its own⟳ rules.”

“Writers had been aware of book-stuffing for months, but this was something else. When #tiffanygate took off on Twitter, Amazon quietly removed Carter’s books from sale.”

“There are deceptive tactics a ‘scam artist’ can employ⟳, such as ‘book stuffing’, where duplicated or gibberish passages are deliberately inserted to inflate page counts. But for authors who don't intend⟳ to mislead, what counts as a page depends not only on their writing but on how Amazon customers read⟳ it - or how quickly they swipe to the next.”

CEFR level