I’ve been building up a huge backlog of material to add to the LMLK Research site, as well as material to blog about, not the least of which involves 2 books published this year with my photos of LMLK handles, one is even on the book’s cover. A third book by a European scholar with my seal drawings is expected to be published later this year.
While vol. 2 of my LMLK series remains years away, last night I happened to browse Amazon.com for “LMLK”, just because it’s a thrill to see my own book pop up in the listing, yet lo & behold, another LMLK book popped up!
Publisher: Alphascript Publishing (January 12, 2010)
Frederic P. Miller (Editor), Agnes F. Vandome (Editor), John McBrewster (Editor)
WTF? (Who’s That Frederic?)
I’ve never heard of these people! “In Situ”? What kind of sub-title is that? And why did they use a modern stamp seal with a wooden handle for the cover image?
As the initial shock lessened, 3 quick clicks on the names of the editors reveals that they’ve been quite busy, apparently writing 39,792 such books!
It became clear when I zoomed in on a little bubble on the cover that nobody actually “wrote” or “edited” this book, but rather a software robot harvested text from Wikipedia articles:
“High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles!”
Wow! You mean for only $49 + shipping I can receive an 80-page paperback printout of a web page that can be downloaded for free in less than 8 seconds? What a bargain!
G.M. Grena
July 6, 2010 at 10:14 pm |
Well done for dodging their scam. More on them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:PrimeHunter/Alphascript_Publishing_sells_free_articles_as_expensive_books
July 6, 2010 at 10:40 pm |
Thanks, Matt! I also saw the list on the Wikipedia page you referenced. With so many Wikipedia articles, I was curious why/how they select certain ones. Maybe it’s related to anything that makes it to a featured article or Did You Know.