Print-On-Demand Publisher VDM Infects Amazon 190
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."
Read the license? (Score:5, Informative)
It's all about the license
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_Unported_License [wikipedia.org]
Creative Commons Deed
This is a human-readable summary of the full license below.
You are free:
- to Share—to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and
- to Remix—to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
- Attribution—You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work.)
- Share Alike—If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same, similar or a compatible license.
With the understanding that:
- Waiver—Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
- Other Rights—In no way are any of the following rights affected by the license:
-- your fair dealing or fair use rights;
-- the author's moral rights; and
-- rights other persons may have either in the work itself or in how the work is used, such as publicity or privacy rights.
- Notice—For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do that is with a link to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ [creativecommons.org]
As it is, they fit all of these. They attribute the original writers in their books. They are fully legit.
If you make content under Creative Commons or other licenses that allow paid redistribution, you also agree for someone else making money out of it in a suitable way. That is the real freedom and the basis of Creative Commons ShareAlike license - everyone is free to use it as they please, as long as the original author is attributed. If you don't like that, then don't write to a site that releases your content under that license. Simple as that.
If you edit Wikipedia, you agreed to this. (Score:3, Informative)
Amazon can help here (Score:2, Informative)
They can provide a checkbox, off by default, that says "include low-selling titles." For logged-in users they can provide user-specified thresholds of what "low selling" means.
I would recommend a default of something like "has sold more than 10,000 copies worldwide in any edition, at least 1,000 in the last year in any edition, and at least 100 copies in Amazon in any edition" -OR- "in the last 12 months, author has received advanced or earned royalties representing at least 10,000 copies and at least $5,000."
Of course, the term "any edition" can be gamed but I'm sure Amazon can work on that later.
Other possible checkboxes:
___ Include novelty press
___ Include publish on demand
_X_ Include all non-POD, non-novelty works (checked by default)
VDM wanted to publish my Master's thesis! (Score:5, Informative)
A few months after I finished my master's degree I got contacted on Facebook by a VDM representative who wanted me to publish my thesis with them. I was incredulous -- what respectable publishing company contacts people on Facebook??
Upon Googling it turns out that VDM is a very shady vanity press. They employ people who go through university websites looking for things to publish (anything will do; there is no quality control). The author gets 5 free copies, and VDM puts the manuscript up on Amazon for hundreds of dollars. The author receives some percentage of sales, but only if they exceed some amount (a few hundred, IIRC), which they probably never will. Otherwise the author gets nothing.
See here [chronicle.com] for a long thread (complete with VDM sock puppets!) of other people's experience with VDM.
Half Man Half Biscuit (Score:1, Informative)
Publicity for a great band, not much of a book if it is taken from the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_Man_Half_Biscuit
Better off listening to the Trumpton Riots EP instead.
It has already happened (Score:4, Informative)
Wikipedia citing a newspaper that was citing wikipedia has already happened, and been discussed on /.
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/10/2211220 [slashdot.org]
Re:VDM wanted to publish my Master's thesis! (Score:3, Informative)
As an author you receive one free copy, not five. The list price on my book is $73 on amazon, which is not cheap but it is not hundreds of dollars. Truely I will not receive any cash payment unless the book sells above some threshold, but hey - for me just having my own book published is very cool.
And if the book sells below the payout threshold you can use the earned amount to buy other books from VDM. There are many to chose from and one that is on my list of books I would like to buy then is Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything [amazon.com].