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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."
Please, which Shakespeare play is about a killing machine sent back from the future?
I chose a similar solution: I dropped the university for a better life. Very rarely during my time at university did I feel it was worth my time to be there. But *every* moment felt like a huge waste of money.
Even the classes that interested me weren't as valuable as they could be because I had to waste my time doing BS homework for BS classes instead of studying worthwhile things in the depth I would have liked to.
On a vaguely-related note, the Steam "New Games" list would be a lot more interesting if every other entry weren't another $20 RailWorks add-on.
Seriously. Ok, we get it Steam, RailWorks is well-supported and gets new locomotives every week.
Steam needs a 4-tier system:
1) Game collections (the id Super Pack)
2) Full games
3) Game expansions (Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising)
4) Game content (new locomotives for RailWorks, the infamous horse armor for Oblivion)
Of course there's always fuzziness (for example, is S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky* a sequel or an expansion?), but at least that way we could filter some of the crap out.
And while I'm ranting mostly-off-topic, maybe Steam shouldn't blow its wad on New Years sales, then have *zero* decent sales for the first 6 months of the year.
* (At least they finally fixed the bug where the original game was named S.T.A.L.K.E.R. but Clear Sky was named STALKER, meaning they didn't alphabetize anywhere close to each other. Now if only they'd rename "The Ultimate DOOM" so it appears somewhere less than 30 miles from DOOM II and DOOM 3, where I'd expect to find it...)
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