Garfield, Norton Fausto

JAM

JAM

I am the storm
Silver Member
I have been doing a lot of research as of late in pursuit of a new venture, which includes creating a website for Keith. The content will be quite unique and definitely his own material, so there will be no infringement or intellectual property issues. :grin-square:

I came across this Garfield, Norton Fausto outfit that claims to have a book about Keith McCready for 140 pages that is strictly info they obtained from Wikipedia. What, are you kidding me? And they want $50 to $70 for it, depending on which website you purchase it at. I don't get it.

Has anybody heard of these people before?

There are several dozen websites offering this so-called "book," but here are a few:

Google Books, 104 pages, Keith McCready
Amazon High Quality Content on Keith McCready
eBay ad for Keith McCready $71.38
Barnes and Noble Paperback on Keith McCready for $56
Books A Million on Keith McCready for $56
Swedish ad for Keith McCready book
JUnglee in India, book on Keith McCready
Sears and Roebuck? :grin-square:

I mean, if anything else, I must give this group an "A" for their advertising capabilities. I am almost tempted to purchase the book to see what on earth they could fill up in 100-plus pages on a Wikipedia article that is only 1 page.

That said, I do admire their advertising method. I would like to know if anybody has had experience with this group. :)
 
Bumping it up. Hoping somebody has heard of this entity.

One thing for sure, they know how to get their product out there.
 
At a glance, they are an alternate name or subsidiary of this group:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDM_Publishing

Their business plan seems to revolve around printing and binding wikipedia articles into books "on demand", in other words I doubt this book physically exists until someone orders it, online pictures of the cover are just mockups and then they print and bind one copy when you order it. They use some random stock photo on a template to make the cover.

Apparently they also approach authors of public works and ask permission to print it, unsolicited. They seem to draw a lot of criticism for this and for failing to disclose that their primary source is wikipedia.

It's pretty clear their book titles are randomly generated from wikipedia, as they have books with titles like "Transportation on the Faroe Islands" or "Tower Lakes, Illinois" or "June 2008 in rail transport".

I have no idea how they get 100 pages. But even in a short wikipedia article, every previous version and edit is stored, as well as the full list of authors, links, and cited references. They probably print all that misc. garbage in full-size print, thus padding the page count.

I'm glad you didn't spend money on this as there's a 99% chance it's EXACTLY the wikipedia article word for word, and no other actual content or research.
 
oldzilla said:
Can they do this without any kind of consent ?

:cool:
Click to expand...

I just can't figure out what they have that would fill 100 pages up. I don't understand it.

If this is a scam, they sure have good advertising skills. Must have bought a lot of Google adwords to have their product disseminated on so many websites. :eek:

I just might have to spend 50 bucks and find out what they're doing, just to satisfy my curiosity. :grin-square:
 
CreeDo said:
At a glance, they are an alternate name or subsidiary of this group:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDM_Publishing

Their business plan seems to revolve around printing and binding wikipedia articles into books "on demand", in other words I doubt this book physically exists until someone orders it, online pictures of the cover are just mockups and then they print and bind one copy when you order it. They use some random stock photo on a template to make the cover.

Apparently they also approach authors of public works and ask permission to print it, unsolicited. They seem to draw a lot of criticism for this and for failing to disclose that their primary source is wikipedia.

It's pretty clear their book titles are randomly generated from wikipedia, as they have books with titles like "Transportation on the Faroe Islands" or "Tower Lakes, Illinois" or "June 2008 in rail transport".

I have no idea how they get 100 pages. But even in a short wikipedia article, every previous version and edit is stored, as well as the full list of authors, links, and cited references. They probably print all that misc. garbage in full-size print, thus padding the page count.

I'm glad you didn't spend money on this as there's a 99% chance it's EXACTLY the wikipedia article word for word, and no other actual content or research.
Click to expand...

Gosh, I'm not sure how they can get away with this.

That would be like me taking AzBilliards Discussion Forum and offering to sell a book about, say, TOI or aiming systems. Imagine the controversy that would ensue if I published word-for-word posts with the member names and sold it. :grin-square:
 
JAM said:
I just can't figure out what they have that would fill 100 pages up. I don't understand it.

If this is a scam, they sure have good advertising skills. Must have bought a lot of Google adwords to have their product disseminated on so many websites. :eek:

I just might have to spend 50 bucks and find out what they're doing, just to satisfy my curiosity. :grin-square:
Click to expand...

I'm sure Keith's time on the bumper pool table would be worth a good 20-30 pages alone.

They pay for the ads by selling books to incredulous people who shell out $50 just to see what it has in it. :) Then again, isn't that how all books are sold. :confused:
 
The have great steaming piles of books listed on Ebay on pretty much every aspect of billiards. I wouldn't be surprised if they had one on the 2007 Pechauer Tour stops in Kansas for $70.

Scummy thieves. And, they clog up my Ebay searches for billiard books.
 
just two days ago, on ebay, I saw a copy of a brunswick "corporate structure" document for $60 dam dollars.

its just a piece of paper that lists the various names that Brunswick has used over the decades...and it wasnt even complete.

60 bucks?
some people are really, really stupid.
like people that try to sell Wiki text in the form of a book.

FYI: check this out
http://blog.osmosio.com/can-you-sell-wikipedia-content-ebook/
 
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