beware books with recycled Wikipedia content
08/06/2011 19:58 GMT

Posted by lisa

I've noticed several publishers starting to sell books primarily consisting of Wikipedia articles.  To be clear, I don't mean books which use Wikipedia as a resource, but rather someone just printing hardcopies of Wikipedia pages.

Watch out in particular for books from "Books LLC" which have bold black text on tan covers with no cover illustration.  Some examples can be seen at these Amazon pages:

http://www.amazon.com/Goodies-Episodes-Lighthouse-Keeping-Beanstalk/dp/1155589416/



http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1157398693

In addition to Goodies-specific titles I've seen, collections from that same publisher that mention one or more Goodies include (but are not limited to):

    - English Humorists
    - English Nature Writers
    - Old Edwardians / Old Wykehamists
    - People from Rochdale
    - British Ornithologists
    - English Radio Writers
    - Scottish Comedians


A second publisher, Alphascript Publishing, appears to have entered the game. While I haven't had a chance to examine this book in person (as I did with one of the Books LLC titles), their "Bill Oddie Goes Wild" paperback (as seen at http://www.amazon.com/BILL-ODDIE-GOES-WILD/dp/613414410X/) includes a note on the cover (in the green circle) saying "High Quality content by Wikipedia articles!"