Throughout history, there have been authors who wrote only a few works and sold huge quantities, while others have written a great number of works over the course of their careers.
Philip M. Parker falls into the last group…sort of.
You see, he created (and patented) a program that generates words and data based on internet and database searches. He then publishes these books to amazon.com.
My recent search of Amazon showed “Philip M. Parker” as having 106,572 books in paperback (mostly), hardcover, and html. Using Print-on-Demand technology, Parker (or perhaps more appropriately, Parker’s programs) seem to focus on uncommon physical ailments (like Emery-Dreifuss Muscular Dystrophy) or translation related crossword puzzles (like Webster’s English to Spanish Crossword Puzzles: Level 2 (Spanish Edition)).
The method:
As explained in the video above, Parker uses a computer to do “100% of the work required by a typical human author. The idea is to take a very small amount of information and have a computer basically write the entire book, or create the entire movie, or create a PC software game, be it for mobile phones or personal computers.”
Using the example of an economist wanting to research the latent demand for Antipsychotic Drugs worldwide, the researcher puts a small amount of information into the program, then the computer opens a word document, begins writing, then goes through and creates a table of contents, copyright information, titles, headings, and even graphs for interesting information.
He then publishes the book to amazon. So, when someone looks for information on this rather obscure subject, they can order one of Parker’s books and have it in their hands within a short amount of time.
Side note: I did notice that, of the books I scanned, none of Parker’s books are available for the Kindle. I wonder why?
Parker’s Publishing Positives (don’t you just love alliteration?)
From what Parker says, some of his more obscure medical topics have as few as ten people suffering from these diseases worldwide. So it would seem that his publishing ability has a net plus for the world.
Parker does concede, though, that anyone with any internet ability can find most of the information in his books online: “If you are good at the Internet, this book is useless,” said Parker in an April, 2008 New York Times article. But, Parker added, those without Internet saavy may find his books useful.
Given the automated style of his writings, what do you think about Philip Parker’s methods?
- The Editors of Mind Floss
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