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 Philip M. Parker's - The Art of Self Publishing |  A search on Philip M. Parker on Amazon returns more than 100.000 titles. A quick scan through the books, however, reveals something odd. All of the titles seem very similar. Almost all of his books are from one of four formats: a thesaurus, a patient resource book, a crossword puzzle book, or a market outlook book. The only things that change are the languages, for the thesauruses and the crosswords; the illness, for the patient resource books; and the product, for the market outlook books.
The obvious fact is that no one has actually done any writing specifically aimed for those thousands of titles. Philip M. Parker has created a computer program that automatically generates a book from a template and an internet search. If, for example, he wants to do a book on an illness (say flatulence), I imagine that the template automatically generates the front cover, back cover, index, bibliography, and introductory disclaimer of the book (filling in the word flatulence where needed). After that the chapters and pages are filled by whatever wikipedia and a few predefined medical sites have listed on the specific illness.
The reality of the process is probably a tad more complicated than that. In an article from The New York Times, six or seven programmers are mentioned and I am sure that some parts of the process are supervised. However, I am confident that the type-in-flatulence click-a-button process I imagined earlier is far nearer the truth than what Philip M. Parker tries to make it sound like in the NYT article.
The 'hard' part of the work is probably acquiring ISBN numbers and uploading the book to Amazon. Although, on second thought, with that many titles I am sure he has that process automated as well.
There are two facts that really surprise me: his books are not cheap, and, while only a few of the titles sell well, many have sales in the dozens, according to the NYT article.
The prizes range from about $15 to as high as $500. The market outlook books usually cost $495, the crossword puzzles cost $14.95, the medical titles $24.95, while the thesauruses cost $28.95.
It is difficult to understand why anyone would ever buy a computer generated book on some rare illness. Yet, in the NYT article, Philip M. Parker explains that a number of medical libraries purchase one copy each of every medical title he publishes. Likewise, it seems quite possible that some people we gongumenn might know have purchased 'Webster's Faroese - English Thesaurus Dictionary by Philip M. Parker', even though it would probably be a jumble of computer generated gibberish.
I guess that 'Webster's' is not a protected trademark since it graces all of his thesauruses and crosswords. His patient guides are also always the 'official' reference for the specific illness.A bit of research showed that the numbers are not quite as bad as it seems. The medical books and the thesauruses number about 1000 titles each. While the large numbers belong to the other titles, that have probably not generated many sales. It seems quite likely, however, that Philip M. Parker is shoveling money in from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and whatever other markets he is allowed to sell computer generated books.
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| Comments |
on October 05 2011 00:59:04
I don't know how to fix the background and font color. Feel free to make changes  |
on October 05 2011 07:08:49
Fixed, and thank you for the contribution. |
on October 05 2011 08:10:03
How do I get into this science?
This is one awesome way to make money and exploit naive (rich) people! |
on October 05 2011 08:21:35
I thought that linkbox killed the news item star  |
on October 05 2011 09:37:55
He has also created Webster's Online Dictionary: The Rosetta Edition, "a multilingual online dictionary".
The content is obviously aggregated by some algorithm from numerous sources, but it's not that bad, actually. Here's the entry for Orange. The site is complete 1990's web crap, though. |
on October 05 2011 10:18:07
Nice find Vuzman. Not that bad, indeed. I suspect he has some sort of 'Wolfram Alpha' setup.
On the one hand, I think it is quite a scandal still to charge $500 for a computer generated market outlook book. Even if it includes some nice graphs and is made using complex algorithms.
On the other hand, I think about your average marketing company, some of which probably deliver something quite similar to those books for a much steeper price |
on October 05 2011 11:22:50
Here's a video where Philip himself talks about how this works:
I guess this could be a good thing for small languages, and obscure diseases, but then again, the smaller and more obscure the subject is, the harder it will be to aggregate something that is actually useful.
The price does seem far too high for the setup he's got going, though, and I wonder about the quality of the content of his books. Is it usable, in any way, or is it jibberish? |
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