Bogus Books Based on Wiki Searches

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Guess that all we can do is post reviews on Amazon alerting people to this fraud...

 

[Hound of UIster]

I wonder if the fictional Civil War hero a kid in my office made up and posted on Wikipedia has a mention in one of these books?

Probably not. There are certain people there who spend 24/7 on that site trying to find articles to nominate for deletion.

 

[The Master of Tarquin Hill]

This is free market capitalism.

Grow up.

 

[FluffyUnbound]

This is free market capitalism.

Grow up.

It is, but it's also well-poisoning.

Amazon has opened up its site to third-party publishers offering print-on-demand products.

Companies that use database tools or browser spiders to produce nonsense books in large quantities - on the idea that if you just put up ENOUGH nonsensical titles, you'll trick enough people that your overall sales figures will make it worthwhile - will ruin the site for publishers trying to use it legitimately.

I could probably go on Guru.com right now and for a couple of hundred bucks get someone to write me a piece of software that would generate books that are literal nonsense - 200 pages of random associations of words with titles - that I could then use another custom script to upload to Amazon's Kindle store. If I upload 20,000 of them, I would probably sell a couple of hundred of these nonsense books a day and make a lot of money.

It would be free market capitalism, but I would still be a &%^$ and people would be right to complain about me and those who did complain would not need to "grow up".

 

[Professor Zoom]

This is free market capitalism.

Grow up.

Why does capitalism have to only move in one direction? Why can't consumers not only warn other consumers about what they are buying (free market, right?) and ask a store to not sell a low quality item?

Free Market, like Free Speech, can go both ways.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I could probably go on Guru.com right now and for a couple of hundred bucks get someone to write me a piece of software that would generate books that are literal nonsense - 200 pages of random associations of words with titles

Sounds like your typical Kenji Siratori novel: Blood Electric

I swear the entire novel is nothing but fucking gibberish. Half text, half HTML code!

"Ecstasy//the beast of the soul/gram that liquefied blood::the internal organ of a dog hyper-links::the psychosexual drone is exposed to the insanity of a chromosome//the hologram hormones of the cold-blooded disease animals that were encircled and slaughtered in the Cadaver City//The defleshed skeletal streaming=murder memory that the reproduction quantifies::evolved to the self ruin=serum of the drug embryo::<<sleep>>;;<< . . ."

And that's just an example...

 

[Ruaidhri]

FWIW, from the Alphascript website:

Do we now have to write in Amazon-books: “Attention! Books contains Wikipedia!”?
Then other publishing houses would have to point out in their books: ... “Attention! Book has only sex-scenario!”
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Actually, that might be helpful.

 

[nx1701g]

I wonder if the fictional Civil War hero a kid in my office made up and posted on Wikipedia has a mention in one of these books?

Probably not. There are certain people there who spend 24/7 on that site trying to find articles to nominate for deletion.

He was mentioned in several Civil War articles on Wikipedia. I know it's still up because one of my old Professor's from the department I worked for emailed me that she received another term paper referencing the character (she helped create the backstory).

 

[gturner]

You people are overreacting to what is a laudable move from online text to paper. When Skynet gets built one of the first moves it will make is selective editing of all Wiki articles, rendering them suspect, useless, or worse. By having printed copies of wiki pages on your bookshelf, you won't be such easy prey when the machines try to take over.