I moderate at a small book message board, and we are getting inundated with spam for a new book. The spam just says things like, “This is the most awesome book ever!” The messages are posted by one-off users–people who sign up to the board just to post these messages. There are no links in the messages. If I don’t delete a message soon enough, it will accrue replies from other one-off posters, all saying the same things.
So, where’s the money in it?
It may not necessarily be about money. It could be about:
There may be other reasons that I’m unaware of, but that’s what comes to mind. While there may be profit in mind down the road, the board you moderate might just be a guinea pig.
Where’s the money?
The book publisher is paying the spammer to generate publicity for the book. Lots of people see the spam, don’t realize it’s spam, and get the idea the book is worth buying. So they buy it. So the publisher makes more money.
The spammer is paid to do a job; they don’t operate on a commission. Just like a traditional ad agency: “Here, I’ll pay you $100K to flood the airwaves & magazines with pollution touting my new gee-whiz product. I just hope to recoup more than 100K in additional sales from it, although I’ll probably never know for sure.”
Most people have developed pretty good defenses to traditional advertising, but they don’t yet have good defenses for fake word-of-mouth recommendations. So that’s where the advertisers are putting their emphasis. That’s why Murdoch bought MySpace.
On a related note, the “Most people who bought _____ also bought _____” feature of some websites is also very powerful and can be manipulated to great effect against the gullible.
That was my first thought, and yet… How can a publisher stay in business if they pay these fucking morons anything? Not only is my board low-traffic, and not only do I nuke the spam pretty damned fast, but the messages are one step above penis spam.
If Simon and Schuster wants to pay someone, they should be contacting me!
Assuming that a real book is in any way involved, the publisher is not Simon & Schuster or anyone legitimate, but something like PublishAmerica or the other scam/vanity houses that will publish any crap. There are many “publicists” who prey on people deluded enough to think they have actually published a book this way. They charge them yet more money to place the book onto countless book venues. So they put a spam announcement that gets nuked. They can still say, I got your book mentioned on 100 book boards!
The gullible are bottomless money pits.
It is a real book, and it’s published by Simon & Schuster.
Oh, well, I can guarantee that S&S has nothing to do with it. Even the gullible can sometimes get published. S&S only publicizes a few of the thousands of books it publishes; the rest have to fend for themselves.*
So either a crazed author or someone who is throwing money down the drain.
*Why, yes, I have been published by S&S. What makes you ask? 
One point: You keep using the plural when referring to the spammer. But it’s probably just one person, registering many times. And that one person probably doesn’t actually even do anything besides read the captchas, all the rest being automated.
I’m beginning to wonder. All of the messages are unique. The last one was three paragraphs, and I likely would have let it stand if it weren’t for the dozens before it.
What’s funny is I just did a google search on one of the usernames, and I found that the person posted the exact messages on the Simon & Schuster discussion boards, too, under two of the same usernames as on my board.
Naive small businesses account for much of it. They pay an “SEO consultant” to work their magic and make their Web site appear higher in Google results for a search term. The small businessperson has no idea what the SEO consultant does on their end. Many unscrupulous consultants will engage in what’s called “black hat SEO”. One black hat SEO technique is contracting Indian spammers, usually through an outsourcing/freelancing site, to post spam on message boards.
There is a company in Los Angeles – I won’t mention their name – that promotes various celebrity clients through guerrilla marketing and Ashleeturfing. They sponsor various fan clubs, and offer rewards for members who can make the most posts promoting their client on message boards. They’re the source of many messages from new members, actually shills, that usually read something like “Hey, what do you think about so-and-so musician’s new album?” I’ve had many Ashleeturfers over several months register and post from an Adelphia Cable IP in Los Angeles; I’ve since blocked the IP.
Here’s a couple of examples of Ashleeturfing. These were first posts by users that have since been banned from my site.
Yes, a British comedy group that is beloved by many Dopers resorted to Ashleeturfing to promote a tour ironically named after potted meat product.
All for the same book?
I’ll wager the spammer is the author or an agent thereof.
What is SEO?
All the more reason to suspect a robot, not wetware. If a real person is involved, it is probably minimal.
Search Engine Optimization, I’m thinking.
Does you site have one of those “wonky text passwords” things when someone registers? By that I mean the user has to type in the distorted characters in an image box in order to register. Current AI routines being what they are, a bot can’t read these characters. Just about every site I’ve registered at recently has those, so if you don’t I’d recommend you install one ASAP.
A CAPTCHA.
Some bots can read some CAPTCHAs. It’s a race.
Incidentally, I’d mention this to S&S.
In fact, I’d have a few folks mention it.
Maybe you can hire thousands at a bargain rate to mention it.
Correct you are. I apologize for using a jargon-ish acronym.
Regarding captchas, I’ll repeat the following from an earlier post I made.
Many captchas have been cracked. Captcha crackers supposedly work by converting an image to grayscale; remiving noise, deinterlacing, and despeckling adjusting brightness and contrast; and then OCR. Others take advantage of flaws in a captcha such as a consistent typeface or style of distortion.
The captcha for vBulletin 3.0.* was cracked a long time ago. Most of the newest breed of captcha-cracking message board spambots were created by Russians.
Here’s a vBulletin 3.0 captcha.
http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/1980/30ps8.png
This is a vBulletin 3.6 captcha. Admis can add their own fonts, and there’s many different options for slant, random text size, and so on.
http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/3536/imageqa8.jpg
CAPTCHA is an acronym? I had no idea!