

Would you pay $62 for a Wikipedia article? - phr
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/6130373856/

======
samwillis
What's really worrying is if you search for the "Editors" of the book there
are over 17,000 book by them:
[http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-
alias%3D...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-
alias%3Dstripbooks&field-
keywords=Lambert+M.+Surhone,+Miriam+T.+Timpledon,+and+Susan+F.+Marseken&x=0&y=0)

They must have made an automated system that creates these books and sells
them on Amazon using print on demand.

~~~
ableal
Curious. I thought of getting numbers to check rate of growth, if any.

With the default 'Relevance' sorting, it's 17,761 (as of 18:44 WET, today).

With any other sorting, it's 13,962.

~~~
ableal
Aaaaaand ... 23 days later (April 04 01:16:55 WEST)

    
    
         Relevance: 21,590 Results
         Others:    17,807
    

An increase of nearly 4k in a tad over 3 weeks, about 170 per day.

By date, they seem to land in batches - Mar 19, Mar 14 ...

~~~
ableal
Another 11 days (Apr 15 12:22:48 WEST 2010)

    
    
         Relevance: 21,589 Results
         Others:    15,039
    

Curious, seems halted, with the second number down nearly 2800

~~~
ableal
Seems Amazon put a stop to it (Fri May 7 10:34:58 WEST 2010)

    
    
        Relevance: 21,589
        Others:       154
    

Huh, 154 ? Checking small print at bottom of results:

 _This search may have been filtered to remove less relevant results. Click
here to include these items in your results_

OK, clicking now lists 21,589, but nearly all of them say:

 _Currently unavailable_

------
lurkinggrue
Books > Children's Books > Characters & Series > Barney:

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pepsi-Carbonated-Pharmacy-
Oldfield-T...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pepsi-Carbonated-Pharmacy-Oldfield-
Talmadge/dp/6130452772/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268333884&sr=1-1)

------
morphir
Save your money for Land of Lisp by Conrad Barski, coming out this month.
[http://www.amazon.com/Land-LISP-Learn-Program-
Game/dp/159327...](http://www.amazon.com/Land-LISP-Learn-Program-
Game/dp/1593272006/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268328493&sr=8-1)

~~~
hvs
It _might_ be. I've been on the pre-order list for that book since last
October and it was supposed to be shipped in November 2009. I wouldn't
necessarily count on it being released this month. Hopefully it'll be worth
the wait..

------
phr
Received a recommendation for this book this morning, because I had bought
Peter Norvig's PAIP and other books on Lisp.

------
Psyonic
I wonder what all is in there. Definitely not just the stack article, because
that is nowhere near 144 pages.

~~~
kaddar
It would actually be kind of cool if it followed the link graph for the
article a couple articles deep, so you could get a customized book of concepts
clustered around a main topic.

~~~
alan_p
I think the book would definitely become a lot more interesting that way.

Chapter 1: Stacks

Chapter 2: Reverse Polish Notation

Chapter 3: Australia

Chapter 4: Penal transportation

Chapter 5: Slavery

Chapter 6: Prostitution

Chapter 7: Pornography

(and I wasn't even trying)

~~~
kaddar
Stack (data structure)

Computer science

Internet

Pornography

Bam!

Regardless, the assumption that pornography would be in every book assumes
that you don't cluster the data to topics with strong clique behavior and
normalize the data to remove overly-linked (aka obvious) topics.

------
stse
I don't see any problem with this, it clearly states that the articles are
from Wikipedia. As long as they don't change the license they can more or less
rework and distribute it however they like. There are also others doing
similar things.

[http://www.wissenmedia.de/wissenmediaverlag/verlagsprogramm/...](http://www.wissenmedia.de/wissenmediaverlag/verlagsprogramm/verlagsprogramm/titelinformationen/buch/320/16.html)
<http://pediapress.com/>

------
ZeroGravitas
For $99 dollars you can have the whole thing (3 million articles) in a 2"
square device:

<http://thewikireader.com/>

------
Legion
I've never been tempted to type "LOL WUT" until now.

I have been willing to pay for printed copies of freely-available digital
material. I bought Dive Into Python 3. I even bought a pair of Lulu-printed
copies of Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby.

Repackaged Wikipedia articles, however, is pushing it a liiitle too far.
Especially given the price. _Especially_ given how unclear the listing is
about what's even in there (as Psyonic said, the stack article doesn't fill
144 pages).

------
zandorg
The great thing is they brand it "Content from Wikipedia" so you know to avoid
it.

Some books (eg, Googled by Ken Auletta) require interviews with over 50 people
- something away and beyond ripping off web content.

------
lsb
If you do, then you can give it away free, because their book is under the
Creative Commons Attribution/ShareAlike license, being a modification of
Wikipedia.

~~~
nroach
The real question in my mind is whether the book provides attribution to
Wikipedia as the source. If not, and if the book's contents are literal copies
of the wikipedia article, then Wikipedia may be able to have the book(s) taken
down because the attribution clause was violated (and thus the license). I've
not looked into the Amazon listing enough to know whether that's the case or
not.

~~~
Gormo
The cover art for each of these books shows a "content from Wikipedia" badge,
so it looks like they are probably conforming to the licenses.

It's a little odd that they'd state it so clearly on the cover, though, since
it seems as though they're trying to exploit a knowledge gap in their target
market.

------
nnash
I thought one of the key points of wikipedia was that it didn't limit access
to information by charging for it.

~~~
njharman
You are correct.

Amazon(book publisher in question) != Wikipedia

~~~
semmons
Amazon is not the publisher, Betascript Publishing is. Looking at their site,
it seems that what they do is gather articles and bind them together (with or
without permission, I don't know). Here is the text from their About page:

 _Annually, millions of works are written worldwide in the research industry.
Enterprises and scientists would be especially interested in these ideas;
nevertheless, up to today, most of this work is shelved as a result of high
costs. Betascript Publishing specializes in the publication of such works and
uses commitment and the latest technology in order to make the invaluable work
of such researchers available worldwide, quickly and efficiently._

