Analysis of Scottish Slang dictionaries on Amazon

These books are garbage but they highlight unfulfilled demand

I don’t know if its okay to use SubStack these days. Am I being complicit in some fascist / Nazi take-over of the internet? I need to be clear that I want no part of that. I’ve deleted Twitter and X off my phone, but still need somewhere to post long form blogs.

Today we are looking at the proliferation of low quality novelty Scots phrases and slang dictionaries available on Amazon, there’s been at least ten published in the last twelve months, and they are surprisingly popular, people buy them.

I don’t know whether they are AI generated, the author names don’t look real, some of the art is a bit AI-like or just low effort clip art, and the number of words and phrases each contains seems woefully smally.

Summary

At the bottom of this post you’ll find screengrabs from Amazon of each book and some bibliographical details, but here is a summary table.

The way I’ve estimated annual sales is fascinating, but not terribly accurate. I did a SubStack about it a few years ago.

By way of comparison the classic Collins Gem / Collins Little Books “Scots Dictionary” has an Amazon Best Sellers Rank of 26,273, my sums reckon it sells around 600 copies each year on Amazon, maybe a thousand copies each year in total.

The novelty / AI Scottish dictionaries collectively outsell the Collins Gem dictionary.

Almost none of the novelty dictionaries have any reviews on Amazon.

Demand

From looking at the Amazon Sales ranks, and even from the way these books appear as sponsored search results on Amazon, we can conclude there is some degree of demand for Scots phrasebooks and dictionaries, demand that the Collins Gem book doesn’t satisfactorily fulfil.

By comparing these novelty phrase book sales ranks to the sales ranks of proper books written in Scots, they compare favourably, out-seller many human-written books - unsuspecting chumps using Amazon are buying this crap.

Jealousy

Last year, you might remember, I put a lot of effort into compiling and publishing a frequency dictionary. It contains the top 2,500 most common words, with about 6,000 distinct spellings, arguably the most accurate and comprehensive snapshot of contemporary written Scots. I’ve sold about a dozen copies.

So when I see some novelty AI slop on Amazon selling hunners of copies, I do feel pangs of jealousy. I just don’t have the same commercial nous as these novelty / AI slop pedlars.

Feel free to order a copy of my high quality independently published Scots dictionary here.

List of books

1. Scottish Slangs Phrase Book

Published : 2024-07-27
Author : Mink Ji Kikoo
Amazon Best Sellers Rank : 222,340
ISBN : 979-8334302396

2. Scotland Slang Words & Phrases

Published : 2024-10-18
Author : Ernesto Akers
Amazon Best Sellers Rank : 106,575
ISBN : 979-8343662146

3. Scottish Slang Dictionary

   

   Published : 2024-11-28
   Author : Slang Mania
   Amazon Best Sellers Rank : 509,499
   ISBN : 979-8301659355

4. Scottish Slang PhraseBook

   

   Published : 2024-09-26
   Author : Mink Ji Kikoo
   Amazon Best Sellers Rank : 657,073
   ISBN : 979-8340451644

5. The Ultimate Scottish Slang Dictionary

   

   Published : 2025-01-21
   Author : Oisin Ellis
   Amazon Best Sellers Rank : 90,650
   ISBN : 979-8307815908

6. The Little Scottish Slang Words & Phrases Dictionary

   

   Published : 2024-04-06
   Author : Mary Mcbaee
   Amazon Best Sellers Rank : 78,103
   ISBN : 979-8322098720

7. Scotland Slang Phrase Book

   

   Published : 2022-09-29
   Author : Autumn May Summers
   Amazon Best Sellers Rank : 70,754
   ISBN : 979-8355367725

8. Edinburgh Slang Phrase Book

   

   Published : 2022-09-29
   Author : Autumn May Summers
   Amazon Best Sellers Rank : 527,364
   ISBN : 979-8355366612

9. The Scottish Slang Handbook

   

   Published : 2025-01-27
   Author : Andrews Dylan
   Amazon Best Sellers Rank : N/A
   ISBN : 979-8308557982

10. Scotland Slang and Phrases Mini Dictionary

    

    Published : 2024-12-27
    Author : Harper J. Rhodes
    Amazon Best Sellers Rank : N/A
    ISBN : 979-8305094558

11. Slangtastic Scotland : A Guide to Scottish Slang Words & Phrases

    

    Published : 2024-08-06
    Author : Ws Moogy
    Amazon Best Sellers Rank : 3,496,914
    ISBN : 979-8227064349