Yes, sometimes there are bootlegs. They are even on Amazon.

About half of the more obscure books I try to check out through kindle unlimited these days are cgpt4 generated random nonsense with the right cover.

Usually they come in the form of autobiographies

Does anyone remember the fake Harry Potter books that kept getting put out?

Yep. Chris Broad had someone steak the cover of his unreleased book and make an amazon listing. The contents of the book was filled with a guide on breastfeeding.

(In the US) I came across computer science and electrical engineering books that were sold at a much lower price as they were printed for the Indian market. Paper and binding were slightly worse than the US version, but not enough to justify a price 80%/90% lower.

Not the kind of fake book you’re asking about, but your question reminded me of I, Libertine, which started off as a prank by Jean Shepherd where he and his late-night radio audience created such demand for a nonexistent book that it made the New York Times Best Seller list. (Theodore Sturgeon was later commissioned to write the formerly fake book, so it now exists.)

I definitely saw “fake” books regularly when I lived in SEA. Especially in Vietnam, street sellers catering to backpackers. They’ve often been wonky copies, out of low-grade paper with often blurry covers. Easy to spot the difference to a genuine edition.

But I’ve never seen this in europe, online or offline. I guess police and costumes are much more strict about copyright and fake products in general. Can’t speak for the US or other places, thought.

There are a lot of reasons why two copies of the same book would go for different prices

Are both version of the book new? If not, is the quality about the same? Maybe one shop has more copies of that book than the other. Perhaps due to who shops there, each store has different focuses on the types of books they offer.

It’s also possible that one is just over pricing, or the other is giving you a good deal

There used to be warnings on books that if it was missing its cover it wasn’t a copy intended for sale.

When I was in college there was a book fair that sold misprints and books with other minor cosmetic issues.

Neither are necessarily fake but different than the retail copies you’d get at B&N.

Just listened today to a podcast interviewing an indie author. His book is distributed partially through a non-Amazon printer, and the price has been the same for its entire release. Even so, he has noticed that occasionally Amazon will revert to some seller with a ludicrous price, even though the book is still available for well under half of the new purchase price. Could be a shady reseller that you’re running into. Don’t know if this is what you’re running into, but it reminded me of it.