While self-published books on Amazon can be a great way for new authors to share their content, some unscrupulous people have been using the platform to capitalize on the public’s coronavirus fears. Amazon has been working to remove multiple coronavirus “guides” that have been posted on the site in recent weeks, most of which are less than 100 pages and are full of plagiarized content from online websites and reports.
Titles like Wuhan Coronavirus: A Concise & Rational Guide to the 2020 Outbreak (COVID-19) and Coronavirus: What is it and how to protect yourself are among the top results when “coronavirus” is typed in the Amazon search bar, but neither has any information that isn’t already available online. To make matters worse, according to The Guardian, Wuhan Coronavirus pulls from NBC news reports to fill its pages.
If you’re interested in books about diseases and pandemics, or how exactly government programs work to protect people from new diseases, there are plenty of books that cover those topics. But for up-to-date information about coronavirus, you’re best off trusting resources like WHO and the CDC.
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Featured photo: Christian Wiediger / Unsplash
