Not quite apropos of https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/post/five-swift-answers-to-the-problem-of-baby-eating-authors , but not not related either, just that I'd brought up the topic with norabombay before actually reading that post.

At some point in the Semi-Near Corporate Deathfuture, a group forms. Buy Nothing, but for ebook discussions. Their fodder: the free books one can find on Amazon.

At this point in time also, publishers have started trading their back catalogs a little more aggressively. There's a market in some of the long tail! Ebook conversion has become easier! But with the growing awareness of some of the offensive personal habits of certain authors and plots that would make the Pope faint, some of the backstock has become a liability. So you might as well bundle it up and sell it, cheap, to whichever publisher wants to distribute it.

Burn Books, in addition to their well-known raze-and-torch mil-SF, has been picking up some of the books that no-one else is willing to touch, for fins on the hunny. Canceled books are consistent with their brand, and variously popular with their internet-notorious commentariat. And it turns out that the long-tail sales off a few volumes of Slave Bear of Counter-Earth will pay for a respectable amount of lawyer time.

Of course, that leaves a lot of the other books in the pack as basically freebies. To drum up sales, some of the starting-point books in a series are listed for free.

Which is where the Free Amazon Book Club comes in.

And what book club is going to resist a book with their name literally on it?

Shenanigans, and possibly a fight with some Terrible People on the Internet, follow.