In a post that went viral on X earlier this month, a man named Tommi Pedruzzi claims to have made $3 million selling books on Amazon — without writing a word. (The post was recently community-noted.)

His first piece of advice for entrepreneurs wanting to build ebook businesses? “Stop writing interesting books.”

Predictably, people thought Pedruzzi was a tool.

Ben Sixsmith, an editor at The Critic, captured the general response: “I’m 34. I sold my soul to Satan. But I wish someone had told me this brutal truth from the beginning. 1/ Stop trying to be a human being.”

(In a more recent post, he writes: “The dumber you write, the richer you get.”)

Pedruzzi’s online persona feels familiar and aspirational: viral threads explaining how to build a million-dollar business using AI; a 50k+ following on X; a girlfriend he claims is a Brazilian model; verdant backdrops featuring palm trees (I’d later find out he often travels to Bali). He has model-good looks and promises that you, too, can make “seven figures” generating and selling e-books, if you only listen to his advice and sign up for his course.

Intrigued, I decided to investigate what this guy actually does. I expected to find someone making everything up just to sell a course — and while I found evidence suggesting that’s partly true, I also discovered a semi-legitimate, if ethically questionable, business model.

Pedruzzi’s approach is smart. He uses AI to analyze best-selling books on Amazon, identifies common complaints in the reviews, then publishes “improved” versions under pseudonyms addressing those specific pain points. He also sells a course teaching others to replicate this process.

While he’s not creating wholly original content — most of his books are AI-generated slop — he has found a way to exploit gaps in the market and occasionally delivers value to customers, however inconsistent. He represents the unglamorous reality of the creator economy: not the aspirational influencers with brand deals and free trips, but the small operators mixing legitimate business tactics with ethically dubious shortcuts, usually with a course attached.

It is a scam, but not entirely.