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Comment by entangld | Hacker News Reader

I've read the books she recommends on her website and they are usually thoughtful pieces of writing.

I don't think her statement, that she uses Amazon data to find other books her readers enjoy, is an admission of immoral conduct. She said a quarter of the books she recommends are from information she gained from Amazon. I believe she's referring to how she discovered them and not the reason she recommends them. Of course I am giving her the benefit of the doubt because the quality of the content on her site is generally high.

She serves her niche of intellectuals fairly well and I think spamming with lower quality content for the sake of making money would be noticed quickly by them. The donations on top of the affiliate links seems a bit much, but I think people might still donate and or purchase in order to show support for her work.

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> I don't think her statement, that she uses Amazon data to find other books her readers enjoy, is an admission of immoral conduct. She said a quarter of the books she recommends are from information she gained from Amazon.

Visiting the website for myself now: http://www.brainpickings.org/

I think it's clear that she's deliberately and forcefully fishing for clicks on Amazon affiliate link hits. I mean, just take a look at the number of large images (every one of them being affiliate links), one after another, encompassing probably 6-page'fuls at times (and I'm on a 1080p res.). I'm a person who's usually very well aware of what is an affiliate link or not... and yet I found myself strongly wanting to click the images. I don't buy it for a single second that Popova is not exactly aware of what she is doing. Her repeated requests for donations (after every post, in which she stresses that this is a site that doesn't have advertisements) leave no room for doubt -- I strongly believe she is disrespecting the user in a very fundamental way by misleading them like this and playing them on.

As I write this, there are over 40 Amazon affiliate links on her homepage alone. And as you correctly point out, they're prominently placed (esp. using images) to achieve maximum click-through.

She says the affiliate revenue she's downplaying is way, way less than what the article assumes. Well, if I were her I'd:

1) disclose all my Amazon revenue and

2) donate it every month to someplace awesome

That'd probably get her more monthly subscribers, earn her more money, and silence the haters. Unfortunately her dissembling on this issue so far sort of edges me into the latter category.

That is very noble of you.

There are also links for every book to find it in your local public library. If you want to pay for the book the site where you found it gets a small cut, but the site also makes it easy for you to get the book for free.

I would change the wording on the tip jar, but if her blog really is generating a lot of book sales it's not unreasonable for her to see some revenue.

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