Warning: Alphascript Star Trek books

[Steve Roby]

Alphascript has begun publishing Star Trek-related books. Do not buy them. Alphascript's business model is simple: the content is swiped from wikipedia, and the high cost is justified on the grounds that these are print-on-demand books (though Lulu-style POD books can be very reasonably priced).

They have a 168-page book called Star Trek: The Original Series: List of Star Trek: The Original Series episodes, Theme from Star Trek, List of Star Trek: The Original Series writers, Cultural influence of Star Trek, Star Trek. Price: $72. And a 236-page book called Star Trek: Gene Roddenberry, Fictional universe, Star Trek: The Original Series, Technology, NBC, Where No Man Has Gone Before, Star Trek: The Animated Series. Price: $94. They're doing similar books for other TV series, including Doctor Who (in fact, I first heard about the Who books over at Gallifrey Base, then checked for Trek stuff.)

I mentioned this on my blog, but a hell of a lot more people read this board.

 

[bbailey861]

Thanks, Steve. After reading this, I did a little searching of my own and have found a link with this title "Alphascript Publishing sells free articles as expensive books". I Don't think I am allowed to link to it here, but if anyone else wants it, PM me and I'll fwd it. You can find it easily enough by Googling the above title as well.

 

[Jim Gamma]

^I think links are permitted here as long as there's no nasty material on the site.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-08-17/News_and_notes

 

[bbailey861]

^ Okay, here it is then:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:P...ishing_sells_free_articles_as_expensive_books

 

[seigezunt]

wow. That's balls.

 

[Dayton Ward]

Wow. These dudes are like the Uwe Boll of publishing. They even have a disclaimer in their books that -- essentially -- reads, "Yeah, we know this stuff might not be accurate, but we're ripping it off....uh, that is...publishing it, anyway. Suckers."

 

[JD]

Wow, that's really scary. Would there be anyway to stop them, other than warning people on sites like this?

 

[captcalhoun]

jesus, they need to work on their titles...

 

[RobertScorpio]

Wow, that's really scary. Would there be anyway to stop them, other than warning people on sites like this?

Well, they must not be so big since I had no idea what this was all about. I would let nature take the lead on this one, and yes, warn others.

Rob

 

[Geoff Thorne]

Well, if any of my art is used in these books I can slap a Cease and Desist on them.

 

[donners22]

I love the way they give all their books five-star reviews. Their justification is quite curious:

Nearly all media worldwide - such as newspapers, magazines, TV - use internet for their researches and as a basis for their texts. This is exactly what Alphascript publishing does. And we go even further: with the Wikipedia-texts at free disposal we create books on interesting topics.

There is hardly another platform for quick and better processing of information than by Wikipedia - and this is too for the benefit of the Alphascript publishing-readers who want to be informed on a specific subject. Of course you can have online everything free of charge, but for good reason you have decided for a book. Alphascript publishing is internet in form of a book. There can hardly be a faster process.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member..._pr_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview

 

[BrotherBenny]

CBS Consumer Products is gonna have fun with this, since they own Trek and have not given a licence.

Am I right in thinking that Alphascript do not have the Wikia GNU Free (or whatever it's called) licence and therefore anything they publish based on that will default to the copyright owners who can sue them back into the stone age?

 

[wew]

Arguably, I guess star trek readers could attempt to rate the books. Since technically, anyone who can access wikipedia in theory could claim they own the book.

Figure a lot of 1 star ratings would do them well.