> My experience inflicted stupidity.

We've all been there.

> I find it nice that they linked to the original book. For every x earned let the original author earn many times more. > It's probably a better deal than the author got from their legal publisher.

These two statements sound contradictory to me.

> And who's fault is that? Google? Or this little slop maker that I'm (again stupidly) assuming is not a SEO hacker.

Why not both? I think there's plenty of blame to go around.

Also, the publisher who presumably convinced the author that it would be a good idea to assign them exclusive rights. The affiliate link the blog post refers to as "the author's own" actually belongs to the publisher.