4 ms·

Just what Amazon needs: 800,000 computer-generated books crapping up the listings along with the thousands of on-demand printed copies of Wikipedia articles. W

by rwg 14y ago

Just what Amazon needs: 800,000 computer-generated books crapping up the listings along with the thousands of on-demand printed copies of Wikipedia articles. Wonderful.

podperson 14y ago
Although, to be fair, while Amazon doesn't need this, it kind of deserves it.
- jrockway 14y ago
  How dare they let just anyone write a book. Printing presses should be reserved for the elite and people whose opinions I personally agree with.
  - enraged_camel 14y ago
    I think you misunderstood that.
    - aw3c2 14y ago
      a misunderstanding could have been prevented if the parent poster gave a reason for his hyperbole.
      - podperson 14y ago
        If you take no responsibility for what's in your store, you'll have terrible, terrible stuff in your store. Oh look.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - readme 14y ago
    s/a book/800000 books with a spam app./
  - keithpeter 14y ago
    Or perhaps we need to find a filter to replace the traditional publisher's editor/market filters. Completely frictionless publishing of anything will just tend to increase the noise and make the signal harder to find.
- oh_sigh 14y ago
  Why is that?
  - podperson 14y ago
    Well, a bunch of reasons: First and foremost -- 1) Like Google it has a "see no evil" business model. ("If humans aren't in the approval loop, we're not responsible.") 2) Its behavior as a company is generally reprehensible (e.g. strong-arming state governments into not collecting sales taxes -- it wants to have its cake and eat it w.r.t. affiliate marketing) 3) Its business models reek of dumping (using profits in one domain to unfairly compete in others). The main difference is Amazon doesn't actually make profits, so it's burning investor capital to win new markets so it can burn more investor capital to win even more new markets, etc. (It will make it up on volume...) The fact that investors buy into this is odd, to say the least, but it's still pretty odious. 4) as a small publisher, I'm still ticked off by the way it allegedly "competes" in the ebook market. (Kindles are the hardest ebook readers on which to read ePubs, KDP does not in fact pay competitive royalties, but Amazon has bamboozled the tech press into believing it does, and even seems to have several governments helping it maintain its near monopoly on epublishing.) 5) Then there's the whole fulfilment / outsourcing thing (e.g. see here http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor?page=4 http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-f... and the linked articles -- if you think Walmart screws its employees, Amazon et al are far worse).
msutherl 14y ago
I can't believe this guy has no sense of humor[1]! He's completely serious about providing a service and making tons of money from it. In one question the interviewer asks: 'could you make a novel for instance?' to which he replies 'well, novels don't usually make money'. Wouldn't you think the correct answer would be 'well, it wouldn't be very good'? Hauntology at its best[2]. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8WuGKyBR90 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8WuGKyBR90 [2] http://booktwo.org/notebook/hauntological-futures/ http://booktwo.org/notebook/hauntological-futures/
- potatolicious 14y ago
  > "to which he replies 'well, novels don't usually make money'. Wouldn't you think the correct answer would be 'well, it wouldn't be very good'?" Perhaps the same question can be posed to many startup founders in our community. Very often people in the startup scene seem much more interested in extracting profit (or really, just making the exit) rather than creating something good (in whatever way that you might personally define goodness).
  - baconner 14y ago
    Agreed. It's a shame to think about all the interesting things that might be getting built instead. Programming a novel generator is a great example. What a fantastic challenge being overlooked. It reminds me of this great video of Vonnegut graphing the emotional shape of stories. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP3c1h8v2ZQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP3c1h8v2ZQ&feature=youtu...
  - michaelt 14y ago
    Plenty of developers write software never hoping to make a dime from it or hire anyone else to work on it. But they have little reason to worry about incorporation or branding or 'pivoting' or 'series a funding' or 'growth hacking', and they self-identify as 'open source developers' rather than 'start up entrepreneurs'.
- dasil003 14y ago
  It's not that he has no sense of humor, it's that the fact that the books aren't good is a foregone conclusion. The idea that one of his books could be good is just not even on his radar.
wdr1 14y ago
As long as you have good search functionality, it shouldn't matter. From what I can tell, so far Amazon does.
Zenst 14y ago
I'm sure this really not help in future digital library archieves for phrase searching. Next we will have entire usenet archieves published as ebooks, least a few threads in there day of more interest.
drucken 14y ago
So ... automated content aggregation in book format? Is it it just me or does it seem odd that the agents with the most, * technology * resources (spanning all non-technology areas including business and legal) * digital content access * familiarity * etc. chose not to create such offerings, not even via subsidiary or ex-employees. I'm talking, of course, of agents such as Google. To me this speaks volumes of whether this is ultimately (legally) viable... Note. Publicity around this particular offering has been around since at least 2007, from what I can tell.
rockmeamedee 14y ago
These aren't actually 'books'. They're mostly business reports, which I hate to say, are already programmatically compiled by interns repetitively applying formulas in spreadsheets and building graphs from database queries. That's why they cost more than paperbacks, because "The 2009-2014 Outlook for Plastics Lamp Shades in the United States" is essential for the people in the business. He also has medical dictionaries which seem to confuse his cause, as he explains "For health titles, only the format editing and production side is automated. The text in the health books was written by medical professionals and edited by a professional editor; the computer expedited formatting using about 50 odd routines (the preface, chapter intros, glossaries, indexes, headings, margins, etc.)"

by rwg 14y ago

Just what Amazon needs: 800,000 computer-generated books crapping up the listings along with the thousands of on-demand printed copies of Wikipedia articles. Wonderful.

podperson 14y ago

Although, to be fair, while Amazon doesn't need this, it kind of deserves it.

jrockway 14y ago
How dare they let just anyone write a book. Printing presses should be reserved for the elite and people whose opinions I personally agree with.
- enraged_camel 14y ago
  I think you misunderstood that.
  - aw3c2 14y ago
    a misunderstanding could have been prevented if the parent poster gave a reason for his hyperbole.
    - podperson 14y ago
      If you take no responsibility for what's in your store, you'll have terrible, terrible stuff in your store. Oh look.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- readme 14y ago
  s/a book/800000 books with a spam app./
- keithpeter 14y ago
  Or perhaps we need to find a filter to replace the traditional publisher's editor/market filters. Completely frictionless publishing of anything will just tend to increase the noise and make the signal harder to find.
oh_sigh 14y ago
Why is that?
- podperson 14y ago
  Well, a bunch of reasons: First and foremost -- 1) Like Google it has a "see no evil" business model. ("If humans aren't in the approval loop, we're not responsible.") 2) Its behavior as a company is generally reprehensible (e.g. strong-arming state governments into not collecting sales taxes -- it wants to have its cake and eat it w.r.t. affiliate marketing) 3) Its business models reek of dumping (using profits in one domain to unfairly compete in others). The main difference is Amazon doesn't actually make profits, so it's burning investor capital to win new markets so it can burn more investor capital to win even more new markets, etc. (It will make it up on volume...) The fact that investors buy into this is odd, to say the least, but it's still pretty odious. 4) as a small publisher, I'm still ticked off by the way it allegedly "competes" in the ebook market. (Kindles are the hardest ebook readers on which to read ePubs, KDP does not in fact pay competitive royalties, but Amazon has bamboozled the tech press into believing it does, and even seems to have several governments helping it maintain its near monopoly on epublishing.) 5) Then there's the whole fulfilment / outsourcing thing (e.g. see here http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor?page=4 http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-f... and the linked articles -- if you think Walmart screws its employees, Amazon et al are far worse).

msutherl 14y ago

I can't believe this guy has no sense of humor[1]! He's completely serious about providing a service and making tons of money from it. In one question the interviewer asks: 'could you make a novel for instance?' to which he replies 'well, novels don't usually make money'. Wouldn't you think the correct answer would be 'well, it wouldn't be very good'? Hauntology at its best[2]. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8WuGKyBR90 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8WuGKyBR90 [2] http://booktwo.org/notebook/hauntological-futures/ http://booktwo.org/notebook/hauntological-futures/

potatolicious 14y ago
> "to which he replies 'well, novels don't usually make money'. Wouldn't you think the correct answer would be 'well, it wouldn't be very good'?" Perhaps the same question can be posed to many startup founders in our community. Very often people in the startup scene seem much more interested in extracting profit (or really, just making the exit) rather than creating something good (in whatever way that you might personally define goodness).
- baconner 14y ago
  Agreed. It's a shame to think about all the interesting things that might be getting built instead. Programming a novel generator is a great example. What a fantastic challenge being overlooked. It reminds me of this great video of Vonnegut graphing the emotional shape of stories. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP3c1h8v2ZQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP3c1h8v2ZQ&feature=youtu...
- michaelt 14y ago
  Plenty of developers write software never hoping to make a dime from it or hire anyone else to work on it. But they have little reason to worry about incorporation or branding or 'pivoting' or 'series a funding' or 'growth hacking', and they self-identify as 'open source developers' rather than 'start up entrepreneurs'.
dasil003 14y ago
It's not that he has no sense of humor, it's that the fact that the books aren't good is a foregone conclusion. The idea that one of his books could be good is just not even on his radar.

wdr1 14y ago

As long as you have good search functionality, it shouldn't matter. From what I can tell, so far Amazon does.

Zenst 14y ago

I'm sure this really not help in future digital library archieves for phrase searching. Next we will have entire usenet archieves published as ebooks, least a few threads in there day of more interest.

drucken 14y ago

So ... automated content aggregation in book format? Is it it just me or does it seem odd that the agents with the most, * technology * resources (spanning all non-technology areas including business and legal) * digital content access * familiarity * etc. chose not to create such offerings, not even via subsidiary or ex-employees. I'm talking, of course, of agents such as Google. To me this speaks volumes of whether this is ultimately (legally) viable... Note. Publicity around this particular offering has been around since at least 2007, from what I can tell.

rockmeamedee 14y ago

These aren't actually 'books'. They're mostly business reports, which I hate to say, are already programmatically compiled by interns repetitively applying formulas in spreadsheets and building graphs from database queries. That's why they cost more than paperbacks, because "The 2009-2014 Outlook for Plastics Lamp Shades in the United States" is essential for the people in the business. He also has medical dictionaries which seem to confuse his cause, as he explains "For health titles, only the format editing and production side is automated. The text in the health books was written by medical professionals and edited by a professional editor; the computer expedited formatting using about 50 odd routines (the preface, chapter intros, glossaries, indexes, headings, margins, etc.)"