No, we were talking specifically about things "mostly written by LLMs... on Amazon" in the ancestor comment by Henchman21 ("My understanding is that romance/porn is mostly written by LLMs at this point.")

Given that we're talking about the set of those, allow that it's pretty obvious to recognize a book by a known author vs an LLM based simply on the title, cover, author bio or lack of, publisher and whether they have links/catalog to any prior books, or a total absence of.

Those are going to skew disproportionately towards e-books and away from paper books. And you can "look inside" to get an idea of their quality. Which in my experience was often bad. So that recommendation wasn't at all stupid.

As to what Amazon recommends you, noone said frontpage, Henchman21 was talking about romance/porn, and as for me I use keyword searches. I see lots of obscure titles from unknown authors ranked above titles I know are reliable.

* EXAMPLE: Search Kindle Store for "guide visit Philippines"

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=guide+visit+Philippines&i=digital...

The #1 hit is not any legit guide, but an obscure 32pp Kindle book by an unknown Portuguese(?) author averaging 3/5 stars, published way back in 2015 (which in itself would be a fail for a travel guide with timely information). I clicked Look inside and confirm it's garbage, really basic, possibly not written by a human.

#2 is a $9.99 title by an unknown Kindle author who managed to be amazingly prolific in the month of Dec 2024 alone, publishing "The Essential Philippines Travel Guide 2025: Things to know before visiting, Best Attractions, Best Hidden Gems, Antiquated Cultures, Culinary Delights, Travel budget, itineraries & Staying Safe"
but then you find in Dec 2024 she also wrote "The Essential XX Travel Guide 2025: ..." for XX = {Philippines, Paris, Malta, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Norway, New Zealand, Berlin, Valencia, Seoul, Serbia, Vietnam, Florida, Costa-Rica, Germany... Sedona AZ, and many more...} Did she visit all these countries in 2024? ever? ("What Makes This Book Unique?
Written by a Team of Philippines Experts: Crafted by those who know the Philippines inside and out, ensuring accurate and authentic recommendations."... "What Makes This Book Unique?
Written by a Team of Morocco Experts: Trust in the expertise of seasoned travelers and locals who know the country inside out... Regularly Updated: Enjoy the latest insights for 2025 and beyond... Impressive.)

The #4 hit is another KindleUnlimited 26pp "Visiting the Philippines as a Christian: Guide to Customs and Worship". Not even a relevant search result.

The #5 hit is "CultureShock! Philippines", the first relevant quality result (although it's a (superb) cultural guide rather than a practical visitor how-to-get-around guide). But it's the only decent item in all these results.

#7 is "Palau Travel Guide 2025: ..." (wrong country) and #10 is "BALI FOR TRAVELERS. The total guide" (wrong country).

Statistically, the average Kindle e-book that Amazon tries to advertise to you for "guide visit Philippines" is far more likely to be the former than the letter. Exactly what I said.

Lonely Planet Philippines doesn't even show up anywhere in the results(!) It should be in the top-3. (Bizarrely, if you know it's the result you want and search for that exact title "Lonely Planet Philippines", it shows up in all its editions.)

(Also: I almost never look for e-books on Amazon, so their A9 search results for me are going to have worse personalization than for you. Try repeating your own search logged out or incognito and see if doesn't get worse. (Search, not frontpage))

And as to "the current wave of "pay to learn our system to get rich publishing e-books [on Amazon]"" ad content I mentioned, I get an obscene amount of those ads on YouTube, for e-publishers that target Amazon. Which helps explain the above results.