Print-On-Demand Publisher VDM Infects Amazon

erich666 writes "In recent months a flood of so-called books have been appearing in Amazon's catalog. VDM Publishing's imprints Alphascript and Betascript Publishing have listed over 57,000 titles, adding at least 10,000 in the previous month alone. These books are simply collections of linked Wikipedia articles put into paperback form, at a cost of 40 cents a page or more. These books seem to be computer-generated, which explains the peculiar titles noted such as 'Vreni Schneider: Annemarie Moser-Pröll, FIS Alpine Ski World Cup, Winter Olympic Games, Slalom Skiing, Giant Slalom Skiing, Half Man Half Biscuit.' Such titles do have the marketing effect of turning up in many different searches. There is debate on Wikipedia about whether their 'VDM Publishing' page should contain the words 'fraud' or 'scam.' VDM Publishing's practice of reselling Wikipedia articles appears to be legal, but is ethically questionable. Amazon customers have begun to post 1-star reviews and complain. Amazon's response to date has been, 'As a retailer, our goal is to provide customers with the broadest selection possible so they can find, discover, and buy any item they might be seeking.' The words 'and pay us' were left out. Amazon carries, as a Googled guess, 2 million different book titles, so VDM Publishing is currently 1/35th of their catalog, and rapidly growing."

Comments

I'm so tempted...

[BitterOak]

I'm really tempted to buy a copy of that skiing book. It might really be worth something, someday. Especially if Amazon drops this publisher. At the very least, with a title like that it would be a great conversation starter as a coffee table book.

Re:It's Not Just Amazon

[eldavojohn]

What about if some people just want to get a paper version of those?

Those what? Wikipedia articles? Someone is but it's only the top 400 articles I think. Anyway, once you print wikipedia it's not wikipedia anymore. Wikis are living documents. It's some sort of Snapshot of a Wiki.

I'm not sure if Wikipedia currently offers such, but if I wanted to get encyclopedia on my bookshelf I would want it to be Wikipedia and all of its contents.

Get a printer and get ready to spend lots of money. There are resources out there to help you format wikipedia. But seriously if you want Wikipedia on your bookshelf, burn a snapshot cd (newest ones are torrented) of the HTML and put that in a jewel case and put that on your bookshelf and update it yearly ... for free. Yes, you can't just flip pages but you have it "on your shelf." Although it's cheating, that's your best bet.

I would buy a book that is based on for example all of the gaming articles on Wikipedia. Maybe it's not up to date, but so ain't any other encyclopedia, and Wikipedia has a lot of content that isn't found on others.

What follows is my opinion. Books tend to fail when they set grandiose objectives. "All of gaming" is setting up an author to fail. Seriously. Hard. Embarrassingly so. That's why we get books limited to dates and ranges and specialties. It's possible. Sometimes you get great books written by groups like the gang of four and they complement each other. Sometimes you get complete trash that is badly titled and that's what's happening in this article.

My advice is not to look for one be-all-end-all book on gaming but instead to seek out the gems that cover your most interested specialties and then augment them with online works. Yes, you have to do work. Like a lot of things there's no silver bullet for something so large. I'm a nerd, such research is fun.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Read the license?

[Anonymous Coward]

"as I can't imagine anyone buying this crap for any purpose"

I can't imagine anyone buying items from spam - but they do.

Size of Amazon's Book Catalog

[LegoEvan]

> 27 million. Just go to amazon.com, choose the books department to the left of the search bar, don't enter anything in the search field, and press go. So that reduces the significance by a factor of 10. That said, it's still 0.2%, which is quite high considering they're not a traditional publisher.

Re:Read the license?

[causality]

You know, I hit "Submit" too soon. I wanted to comment on your final paragraph as well:

Sadly instead of empowering books and their content, the advent of print-on-demand will cause people to doubt the once rigid standards books held. And rightfully so with entrepreneurs like VDM waltzing around. Don't think this won't spread or VDM won't set up fronts to publish under to avoid their known muckraked name.

I would love for this to happen. It's about damned time the average person became more savvy and learned that skepticism and the ability to distinguish good information from bad are extremely healthy traits. These things are not burdens that one should resent having to perform; they are privileges. For that matter, it's about time it was widely understood and appreciated that no one has your best interests at heart quite like you do. Over-reliance on someone else to be your "gatekeeper" is for people who need to be spoon-fed and have their information interpreted for them. All of the damage VDM could possibly do to anyone would be a very small price to pay for this. I do not exaggerate in the slightest when I say that if critical thinking became a common skill, it would radically change our society for the better.

Yes, let's ruin our credibility.

[Anonymous Coward]

This kind of article is exactly why the open source/copyleft movement doesn't get taken seriously. Free use is only respected when it's someone the neckbeard hivemind loves, cue stories like this or the once-a-year like clockwork furor about Windows containing fragments of BSD. It's especially laughable that somewhere like Slashdot, which prides itself on devotion to the movement, joins in the rage and betrays both readers' and editors' complete incomprehension of the licenses they're constantly on about as ideals.
This isn't even new, most major booksellers have been carrying print-on-demand copies of -manpages-, usually out of date at printing and definitely so within a few months, for over a decade. Charging $15 or so, too. But that was wonderful because it was retail exposure for Linux, wasn't it?

Re:Yes, let's ruin our credibility.

[causality]

They have an excellent chance of being seen as invalid when even their proponents add the caveat "...but this free access only counts if we like you". Either you believe works being free for use is a good thing, or you don't, and the abject rage whenever someone puts a price tag on GPLed/copylefted works smacks of the movement considering the concept a weapon against entrenched publishers rather than a goal. If you're terming something that the lawyers that wrote the license considered a positive feature "abuse" and an opportunity for "selfish gain", perhaps you should reconsider your position on copyright and support French-style stricter rather than looser copyright laws with a moral right clause.

Ironically, these people are almost definitely outsourcing their printing, and probably not even generating a layout until after an order. If it's so bothersome, why not run the same wget->latex->gs chain they do, undercut by half a dollar, and donate all proceeds to Wikipedia?

For an analogy, my views on this are similar to my views on free speech. I may strongly dislike an opinion that you express, but that does not give me the right to attempt to censor you. Instead, the way to handle that is to use persuasion, or to challenge you with an example of what I believe is better speech. Likewise, I think this is a rather selfish use of Wikipedia's information, but I don't believe it should be prevented. It is clearly the intention of Wikipedia that such uses be allowed, and their freedom to make that decision is more important to me than my personal opinion of this particular use. If the "proponents" you mention don't understand this and are as petty as you suggest then they merely hinder themselves.

This discussion is actually an iteration of a general worldview. It's a shame that in many conversations about freedom, there is an such an undue emphasis on personal opinions. The unstated assumption is that they are more important than the concern for freedom. I can see that the root of this is a desire to control others, to have them do only the things of which you would approve. It's contagious and so prevalent that everyone has to interact with it in some way, either to acknowledge and reject it or to be conditioned to accept it as normal. Apparently the latter choice is more popular, as there are not many who would seriously defend (otherwise harmless) speech with which they strongly disagree. Most would either do nothing or try to silence the speaker.

I see that this is the norm. The environment created by such a norm makes it all too easy to overlook the significance of claims I never made. So I can't count it against you that it seems logical to you that I'd advocate stronger copyright controls, since that would amount to using the force of law to prevent something not because it's wrong, but because I dislike it. I'm hoping you can see that my position is not what you may have expected. Interpreted in that light, some of my statements should make more sense. If VDM stops doing this, I want it to be because they change their minds and agree with me that they can do better, not because someone made a law to stop them.

Incidentally, I don't like what VDM is doing because I believe they are charging a high price for a shoddy, low-quality product when the high-quality version is available for free. I would not use words like "exploitative" if I believed they were doing anything to actually earn that money. I consider this to ultimately be a matter that is between VDM and its customers. I am merely explaining why I won't be one of them.

New money-making scheme

[Smallpond]

1) Vandalize the wikipedia article about yourself
2) Order the print-on-demand book
3) Sue VDM for libel
4? Profit!

Re:Read the license?

[ultranova]

The complaints are coming from the people buying this tripe--and rightfully so.

If this spam really starts turning up in every Amazon search, I'd imagine a lot more people will be complaining, and eventually looking for alternatives. Someone at Amazon has let greed got to their heads, and is chasing their golden egg laying goose with an axe on hand and a mad glint in the eye.

You used to be able to acquire a book and know that since it was a book the author(s) had done their homework. It was hard for idiots to get publishing deals because the publishers would actually read their work.

Um, no. People who have no idea what they're talking about - or know but lie intentionally - have never have any problem getting heard. Publishers select books based on how much they'll sell, not on whether or not they're factually correct. If you want the latter, you need to subscribe to a peer-reviewed journal, and even those are ultimately untrustworthy.

If you trust a book just because it's a book then, to put it bluntly, you are an idiot.

Circle jerk

[mutube]

Does this mean Wikipedia articles can now cite themselves in book form as authoritative sources? Super-holy-shit-vicious-circle Batman!

Re:Read the license?

[tomhudson]

So do like I did - don't buy the books. If they're "teaching from the book", you're wasting your money on the class - bitch about it as "low-quality education" and drop the course for a better one. If they're not "teaching from the book", you don't need the book.

Re:This might actually be a pretty good developmen

[CAIMLAS]

These books are not likely to sell all that well on account of their computer-generated nature. People will buy them expecting one thing (on an impulse buy), and get something else.

On the other hand, if a publisher were to undertake the same thing this company is BUT have their books be topical while being accurately targeted...

For instance, you could make a selection of books such as:

* The Thralls of Greece - Greece, Past and Present
* Castles of the World
* Indigenous Cultures of The World
* Common Diseases
* Plants of North America
* Pocket Guide to British Columbia
* Military Ships of the Victorian
* History of the British Royal Family

And so on. Granted, it would take a fair amount of human selection to get a quality publication, but such a publication would likely sell pretty well. No, they'd not be in-depth but they would provide a good high-level topical look at things which do not get covered in such detail in, say, a typical encyclopedia. There are many books out there that do this already, yes. But those sell; why couldn't these?

The solution: competitors

[acheron12]

As with any get rich quick scheme, a bunch of copycats will show up doing the same thing only at slightly lower prices. This will solve the problem. How? Well as the copycats compete the prices of these "books" will keep on dropping until profit is minimal, at which point the service offered - nicely bound hard copies of Wiki articles - will actually be worthwhile. With any luck, they'll start bundling the articles into more logical collections too.

Re:VDM are Spammers

[The boojum]

I agree that it's a nuisance but I'm not certain it's spam. I am not receiving unsolicited e-mails or cold-calls to my phone about this. Unlike my personal inbox or my personal telephone, Amazon is a place of business.

Maybe you haven't seen it yet, but I've received a number of e-mails from Amazon announcing "new books" from these guys with titles referring to topics that I'm interested in. Yes, I can opt-out of such e-mails from Amazon but automatic notification of new books in my field is a useful service to me, and it's led directly to Amazon getting sales out of me because they provide it.

So yes, it does lead to spam of a form, and I think Amazon needs to handle this very carefully.

Re:Read the license?

[Blakey Rat]

I can say that Amazon (and Barnes and Noble, and whoever else is carrying this content) isn't going to de-list them until they get a massive PR backlash. They're indirectly making money off of this as much as VDM is.

You could try to get your local consumer advocate news program to cover it, perhaps... that might force Amazon into taking some kind of action.

Re:It's Not Just Amazon

[cgenman]

You do realize that Wikipedia has at least a page on pretty much every game ever published, plus every publisher, development house, and some individual developers. Here's a partial list of puzzle games on wikipedia, linking to 175 separate multi-page articles on puzzle games alone, and it's not exhaustive. Wikipedia actually has a list of Video Game Lists, with 67 similar articles. Assuming similar numbers of articles, that's already 11,725 multi-page documents to print. Or you could jump right to the source, with the list of all video games, list of all canceled games, and list of all vaporware. It looks like most systems have received between 500 and 5,000 games, and 1/2 of all of those have articles.

Let's pick some numbers. There are about 100 video game platforms out there, and about 1,000 games on each one. Half of those games have articles, and most articles average 4 pages printed. To take into consideration developers and publishers (who usually have really long articles), let's double that again. Now let's assume that 1 piece of paper weighs .013 oz, and is 0.0038 inches thick. Without including other gaming-related articles (spin off series, cartoons, gaming events, etc), you're looking at 400,000 pages. That would weigh in at 325 pounds, and would be 126 feet thick... without covers or bindings. And that's not even all of video games.

Want a professional's estimation? Here's one that's just 5,000 pages printed, covering 3,000 articles. It's about 2 feet tall. The pages are compressed a bit, and double-sided, but nice. That represents the "featured" articles on wikipedia, or about 1 in 1,140. Hence, all 3,242,544 english - speaking articles would print out in a book about 1/2 of a mile long. Of course, for the full 9,474,000 international articles, you'd need a mile-and-a-half long bookshelf.

There really isn't any reason to have a printed version of Wikipedia. Either the information is obscure enough that you wouldn't reasonably be able to include it in a printed copy, or it's so specific that you pretty much have to know it ahead of time to include it in a printed version. It just doesn't work outside of the digital realm, any more than you'd try to get a theater-sized print of every frame of every movie available on Netflix.

Re:It's Not Just Amazon

[erich666]

VDM Publishing itself specializes in print of demand of various people's theses. Something like a vanity press, but as a bonus the authors don't have to pay anything, and VDM takes 80% of the earnings. These are sometimes weak offerings, and often available to download for free, but the practice itself is nothing out of the ordinary. So VDM Publishing's authors really are authors, but of theses and similar.

Alphascript and Betascript Publishing (and Fastbooks, in German) are the Wikipedia-aggregation publishers, imprints of (i.e., marketing names for) VDM Publishing. They entirely avoid the expense of looking around for theses and approaching authors, instead simply sucking related articles from Wikipedia. The book titles are goofy as a result, there are no authors, but the costs are miniscule. With a pool of a few hundred million unsuspecting customers exposed via Amazon and others, it just takes one out of every thousand to misstep to make for a profitable business, one that basically makes money off of people's ignorance. At least cigarettes offer nicotine in addition to lung cancer. To the people who argue, "well, you should just be aware of the problem", this sounds to me like smug "I'd never get fooled, I'm so smart" blather to me. Would you say the same if you were the one who bought such a book? Maybe you would, maybe you're the type of person who blames themselves for getting conned, but I blame the con man.

Speaking of blather, I'm sad that no one's commented on one of the Betascript "editors" names is Lambert M. Surhone, which the Internet Anagram Server turns into "Blather Summoner" as the first match, a great fit for the products offered. My original article on VDM mentions this and other fine anagrams.

One ray of sunshine is that giving these books 1-star ratings on Amazon does kick them down the lists. For example, I gave 1-star ratings to a number of their so-called books on Transnistria on Amazon. 3 of their books were the top three books listed on this subject on Amazon before I rated them, now they appear further down the list.

As far as other firms go, AbeBooks indeed sells Alphascript Publishing (45333) and Betascript Publishing (953) books. Oddly, they are all the same price (vs. those on Amazon, which appear to be priced by the pound), from a few different shops. Borders, to their credit, does not carry any Alphascript or Betascript books. Barnes and Noble does.

I will say one thing for VDM, they do add a tiny bit of value (beyond the wacked titles) in their choices of covers, e.g. this peculiar one for a book on legal disputes about Harry Potter.

Re:VDM are Spammers

[LihTox]

Just because you aren't interested in the books you think it's spam? Who opted in to receive the emails from Amazon? You?

Just because you aren't interested in Viagra you think it's spam? Who opted to have an email account? You?

These aren't a problem if they are a niche offering, but if every search I make on Amazon winds up containing 10 or 20 of these, then that's interfering with Amazon's business and they're going to have to deal with it somehow.