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He Wrote 200,000 Books (but Computers Did Some of the Work)
Sandy Huffaker for The New York Times

Philip Parker says he has computers do the substantial amount of repetitive work that is required in the writing of so many books.

By NOAM COHEN
Published: April 14, 2008

It’s not easy to write a book. First you have to pick a title. And then there is the table of contents. If you want the book to be categorized, either by a bookseller or a library, it has to be assigned a unique numerical code, like an ISBN, for International Standard Book Number. There have to be proper margins. Finally, there’s the back cover.

Philip Parker is now turning his efforts to video.

Oh, and there is all that stuff in the middle, too. The writing.

Philip M. Parker seems to have licked that problem. Mr. Parker has generated more than 200,000 books, as an advanced search on Amazon.com under his publishing company shows, making him, in his own words, “the most published author in the history of the planet.” And he makes money doing it.

Among the books published under his name are “The Official Patient’s Sourcebook on Acne Rosacea” ($24.95 and 168 pages long); “Stickler Syndrome: A Bibliography and Dictionary for Physicians, Patients and Genome Researchers” ($28.95 for 126 pages); and “The 2007-2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India” ($495 for 144 pages).

But these are not conventional books, and it is perhaps more accurate to call Mr. Parker a compiler than an author. Mr. Parker, who is also the chaired professor of management science at Insead (a business school with campuses in Fontainebleau, France, and Singapore), has developed computer algorithms that collect publicly available information on a subject — broad or obscure — and, aided by his 60 to 70 computers and six or seven programmers, he turns the results into books in a range of genres, many of them in the range of 150 pages and printed only when a customer buys one.

If this sounds like cheating to the layman’s ear, it does not to Mr. Parker, who holds some provocative — and apparently profitable — ideas on what constitutes a book. While the most popular of his books may sell hundreds of copies, he said, many have sales in the dozens, often to medical libraries collecting nearly everything he produces. He has extended his technique to crossword puzzles, rudimentary poetry and even to scripts for animated game shows.

And he is laying the groundwork for romance novels generated by new algorithms. “I’ve already set it up,” he said. “There are only so many body parts.”

Perusing a work like the outlook for bathmat sales in India, a reader would be hard pressed to find an actual sentence that was “written” by the computer. If you were to open a book, you would find a title page, a detailed table of contents, and many, many pages of graphics with introductory boilerplate that is adjusted for the content and genre.

While nothing announces that Mr. Parker’s books are computer generated, one reader, David Pascoe, seemed close to figuring it out himself, based on his comments to Amazon in 2004. Reviewing a guide to rosacea, a skin disorder, Mr. Pascoe, who is from Perth, Australia, complained: “The book is more of a template for ‘generic health researching’ than anything specific to rosacea. The information is of such a generic level that a sourcebook on the next medical topic is just a search and replace away.”

When told via e-mail that his suspicion was correct, Mr. Pascoe wrote back, “I guess it makes sense now as to why the book was so awful and frustrating.”Mr. Parker was willing to concede much of what Mr. Pascoe argued. “If you are good at the Internet, this book is useless,” he said, adding that Mr. Pascoe simply should not have bought it. But, Mr. Parker said, there are people who aren’t Internet savvy who have found these guides useful.

It is the idea of automating difficult or boring work that led Mr. Parker to become involved. Comparing himself to a distant disciple of Henry Ford, he said he was “deconstructing the process of getting books into people’s hands; every single step we could think of, we automated.”

He added: “My goal isn’t to have the computer write sentences, but to do the repetitive tasks that are too costly to do otherwise.”

In an interview from his home in San Diego and his offices nearby, Mr. Parker described his motivation as providing content that the marketplace has otherwise neglected for lack of an audience. That can mean a relatively obscure language is involved, or a relatively obscure disease or a relatively obscure product.

Take, for example, the study of bathmats in India.

“Only one person in the world may be interested in that,” he conceded, “probably a strategic planner for a multinational that makes those.” But he points out that once he has trained the computer to take data about past sales and make complex calculations to project future sales, each new book costs him about 12 cents in electricity. Since these books are print-on-demand or delivered electronically, he is ahead after the first sale, he said.

His company, the Icon Group International, is the long tail of the bell curve come to life — generating significant total sales by adding up tens of thousands of what might be called worst sellers. For example, a search at the Galter Health Sciences Library of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University found half a dozen Icon books, mainly in the library for patients and their families.

Icon is “a very innovative and interesting example of print on demand,” said Kurt Beidler, a senior manager at Amazon.com who runs the publishers’ services for BookSurge, Amazon’s print-on-demand company. “A lot of examples of print on demand take older books and bring them back — really acting as a supply-chain tool. In this kind of business, it’s a new business, using this capability to introduce new material to customers.”

Mr. Parker compares his methods to those of a traditional publisher, but with the computer simply performing some of the scut work. In an explanatory YouTube video, Mr. Parker shows a book being created. The computer is given an assignment — project the latent demand for antipsychotic drugs around the world, based on the sales figures in the United States.

“Using a little bit of artificial intelligence, a computer program has been created that mimics the thought process of someone who would be responsible for doing such a study,” Mr. Parker says. “But rather than taking many months to do the study. the computer accomplishes this in about 13 minutes.”

An editor picks the years to be covered, but the computer picks the optimum model for extrapolating sales in various countries, and in alphabetical order produces a chart for each country. “It will then open a Word document and export the information into Word just like a real author would out of their minds, so to speak, or spreadsheets,” he says.

Artificial intelligence researchers say computers are far from being what the general public would consider authors.

“There is a continuous spectrum, also known as a slippery slope, between a program that automatically typesets a telephone directory and a program that generates English texts at the level of variety you would expect from a typical human English speaker,” said Chung-chieh Shan, an assistant professor in the computer science department of Rutgers. “The former program is easy to write, the latter program is very difficult; in fact, the holy grail of linguistics. Like Mad-Libs, Parker’s programs probably lie somewhere between the two ends of this spectrum.”

Mr. Parker has lately taken to lighter fare intended to educate. He said he had invested “up to seven figures into the animation business” for word-based video games and animated game shows that will teach English to non-English speakers. YouTube has many examples of these games, which have computer- generated scripts.

A low-tech version of those games are the thousands of crossword puzzle books Mr. Parker has made in about 20 languages. The clues are in a foreign language and the answers are in English. The computer designs the puzzles and ensures that the words become harder as one progresses.

As part of his love of words, and dictionaries in all languages, Mr. Parker said he has taken to having his computers create acrostic poems — where the first letter of a series of words spells a synonym of those words, often to ironic effect.

Of course, one of the difficulties of generating a hundred thousand poems is stepping back and assessing their quality.

“Do you think one of them is Shakespeare?” he was asked.

“No,” he said. “Only because I haven’t done sonnets yet.”

He Wrote 200,000 Books (but Computers Did Some of the Work) – New York Times.

Thursday, Apr. 10, 2008
Writers Vs. Editors: A Battle for the Ages
By Michael Kinsley

Like the detectives and the prosecutors on law & Order, two very different groups of people are responsible for the words that fill the world’s magazines and newspapers. There are the writers, who produce the prose, and the editors, who do their best to wreck it.

Writers are sensitive souls–generally intelligent and hardworking but easily bruised. Treat them right, though, and you will be rewarded. Writers shape words into luminous sentences and the sentences into exquisitely crafted paragraphs. They weave the paragraphs together into a near perfect article, essay or review. Then their writing–their baby–is ripped untimely from their computers (well, maybe only a couple of weeks overdue) and turned over to editors. These are idiots, most of them, and brutes, with tin ears, the aesthetic sensitivity of insects, deeply held erroneous beliefs about your topic and a maddening conviction that any article, no matter how eloquent or profound or already cut to the bone, can be improved by losing an additional 100 words.

If you’re lucky, your editor will have lost all interest in your article by the time you produce it, and on the way to a fancy expense-account lunch, he will pass it along unmolested to the copy editors (apprentice fiends, with intense views about semicolons). If you are not lucky, your editor will take a few minutes to ruin the piece with moronic changes and cloddish cuts before disappearing out the door.

I didn’t always feel this way. (And even now, nothing here should be construed to apply to the editors of TIME, who edit with the care of surgeons, the sensitivity of angels and the wisdom of the better class of Supreme Court Justices.) I have spent most of my professional life as an editor. When editors get together, they complain about writers with the same passion that writers bring to complaining about editors.

Writers, they say, are whiny, self-indulgent creatures who spend too much time alone. They are egotistical, paranoid and almost always seriously dehydrated. Above all, they are spectacular ingrates. Editors save their asses, and writers do nothing but bitch about it. “If anyone saw the original manuscript from …” (and you can insert the name of your favorite Pulitzer Prize-winning writer here) “… that guy wouldn’t get hired to clean the toilets at the Stockholm Public Library. Say, the Pulitzer is the one they give away in Scandinavia, isn’t it? I better remember to change that in a piece we’re running. The stupid writer says it’s the Nobel. What would they do without us?”

Editors are selfless, editors believe. They labor in anonymity and take their satisfaction vicariously. The writer gets all the glory. He gets the big bucks. He gets invited to the parties, the openings, the symposia, while the editors toil at their desks turning the writer’s random jottings and pretentious stylistic quirks into something resembling English prose. But that’s O.K. Editors don’t mind. They say, “Have a lovely time at that writers’ conference, and we’ll have the rewrite done when you get back.” (“And your laundry too, you unappreciative bastard,” they mumble under their breath.)

When I was an editor, I reasoned like an editor. But these days I am a full-time writer, and I have put away the editorial mind-set. Now I say, before you criticize writers, you should write a piece in their shoes.

Did you say paranoid? Is it paranoid to wonder why an editor hasn’t returned your calls for two weeks, even though she has been sitting on your piece for four? Did you say egomaniacal? What self-respecting egomaniac would put up with the enraging powerlessness of the freelance writer, totally dependent on the whims of half-literate editors for a pathetic drip-drip-drip of income. Oh, for a regular paycheck and health care, so you wouldn’t have to suck up to some jerk of an editor for the next mortgage payment. (“Yes, I see. You want it to be iambic pentameter with internal rhymes. I’ve never read an analysis of the political situation in Pakistan done that way before. What a good idea!”)

So this is an apology to any writers I may have treated callously over my years as an editor. If I didn’t answer your e-mail, I’m sorry. If the check was late or the amount less than agreed on, please forgive me. If I shut my office door, turned off the lights and hid under the desk when I heard you coming, I deeply regret such childish behavior.

On the Internet, they don’t have editors. Or they don’t have many. Writers rule, and a thought can go straight from your head onto the Net. That used to sound hellish. Now it sounds like heaven.

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* Click to Print
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* Find this article at:
* http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1729711,00.html

Writers Vs. Editors: A Battle for the Ages — Printout — TIME.

Wendy or Erin…

how do I access your magazine?  I cant for the life of me figure out where it is.

Alison

Meditations on a quote (from the Editor)

There’s something about a Starbucks beverage that each person holds in anticipation. For some, it’s the aesthetics formed by the foam and espresso when their drink is made to order. For others, it’s a chance to be set apart through a customized latte unique to them. And, for the majority, it’s all about that bit of artificial energy to get them through the dreaded 9-5.

What I look forward to the most is the quote on the side of the cup. Eloquently arranged words have a way of captivating my attention and forming a memory. A set of lines that has stuck with me for over a year are the words of Barry Privett:

“With childhood comes a brief grace period of ignorant bliss, when you’re not aware of the pain around you. That is the most special, unique time. It is the core of adult lament.”

These words provoked my thoughts, so I decided to put them to the test. I could have simply pondered the phrase, but a far more significant opportunity arose.

In the months following that fateful encounter in Starbucks, I traveled to India with four peers on a community development housing project for five weeks. We built homes for widows, a demographic ostracized by society because they’re seen as a financial strain on their families. These widows not allowed to “look beautiful” anymore, so they shave their heads as a public statement of their lamenting social status.

Having previously encountered the third world, I thought that I had seen suffering – that I knew what poverty was. But my eyes were finally opened to that reality in India. The social segregation from the caste system was so foreign to me. It then made sense that when I saw a man violently convulsing on the street, no one offered him any aid. Or when a man flew off his motorcycle and face-planted into the pavement, that some witnesses fled the scene.

My worldview was wrecked after I witnessed those things. I felt so far from home, from comfort, from the familiar. I found myself longing for that ignorant, childlike bliss.

Yet nearly a year after those experiences, I still ask myself: is ignorance really bliss, or does adult lament stem from blocking out the reality of life? I find myself looking at children and envying at their innocence to the pain around them; then I’ll be in awe of those at the end of their long lives because they’ve made it through the barrenness.

Looking back now, I know that my conception of reality would be more optimistic had I not witnessed the suffering in the world. Yet I can see that suffering leads to empathy and compassion. These things ultimately hold more value than bliss, and it took the shattering of my perspective to finally understand this truth.

_______________________________________________

The Year 2000

A new year. A new century. A new millennium. When the year 2000 rolled around, it met a world in anticipation. Some believed it was just another New Year’s Eve, but the majority were preparing for what would be the downfall in the global market via the “Y2K” disaster. Yet the clock ticked past midnight in Times Square and life went on unchanged.

The year saw many other cultural milestones, some which still garner attention from around the world.

On March 7, Hillary Rodham Clinton was elected as a United States Senator, the first time a First Lady ever entered into Congressional office. Some saw this as potentially paving her way to becoming President of the United States, which has played out in the current heated race for the White House.

Another political landmark, on November 7, 2000, was George W. Bush’s victory against Al Gore in the presidential election, one of the tightest races in history. Yet this would not be fully resolved for weeks because of multiple re-counts in Florida. This controversy has been debated for the past seven years during a period of war, terrorist attacks and potential economic recession.

While politics always catch global attention, another face has dominated media coverage over the past decade. That face is Britney Spears, whose sophomore album “Oops!…I did it again!” was released on May 16, 2000. The collection sold 1.3 million copies in its first week, setting a new record for highest sales in a week by a female solo artist in recording history. This milestone of stardom was a mere stepping stone for the world’s infatuation with Spears, following her decade-long display of career success, failed marriages, child bearing, head-shaving, rehab-stints, custody battles and forced hospitalizations.

faucet-magazine

Oh joy, here it is!!

I was doing a little “research” on Wikipedia, so I thought I’d share…

En dash versus em dash

The en dash is half the width of the em dash. The width of the en dash was originally the width of the typeset lowercase letter ‘n‘, while the width of the em dash was the width of an uppercase ‘M‘; hence the names. A more correct definition of the em width is the point size of the currently used font, since the M character does not occupy an exact square in many fonts.^[9]

Traditionally an em dash—like so—or a spaced em dash — like so — has been used for a dash in running text. The Elements of Typographic Style recommends the more concise spaced en dash – like so – and argues that the length and visual magnitude of an em dash “belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian typography.” The spaced en dash is also the house style for certain major publishers (Penguin, Cambridge University Press, and Routledge among them). However, some longstanding typographical guides such as The Chicago Manual of Style still recommend unspaced em dashes for this purpose. The Oxford Guide to Style (2002, section 5.10.10) acknowledges that this style is used by “other British publishers”, but observes that Oxford University Press (OUP) does not use it. In practice, there is little consensus, and it is a matter of personal or house taste; the important thing is that usage should be consistent.

The en dash (always with spaces, in running text) and the spaced em dash both have a certain technical advantage over the unspaced em dash. In most typesetting and most word processing, the spacing between words is expected to be variable, so there can be full justification. Alone among punctuation that marks pauses or logical relations in text, the unspaced em dash disables this for the words between which it falls. The effect can be uneven spacing in the text.

En dashes are often preferred to em dashes when text is set in narrow columns (as in newspapers and similar publications).

The spaced em dash risks introducing excessive separation of words: it is already long, and the spaces increase the separation. In full justification, the adjacent spaces may be stretched, and the separation of words is further exaggerated.

Regardless of any other variations, the em dash should never be used in number ranges.

It was a time-honored tradition for children of the ‘70’s and ‘80’s: waking early on Saturday morning, curling up on the couch with a bowl of Cheerios and watching cartoons.  For many of us, Saturday morning cartoons played an integral role in our childhood development. The Care Bears taught us the importance of sharing; Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner showed us that bad guys finish last; and Captain Planet informed us of the dangers of environmental degradation.

            During the ‘70s and ‘80s, major broadcast networks such as ABC, CBS and NBC had over 20 million viewers tuning in each week to their Saturday morning slot. Toy advertisers benefited from the networks’ ability to create a single timeslot to target younger audiences. Merchandising became easy. A child’s favorite cartoon hero became their favorite action figure or play thing. G. I. Joe, Transformers and Strawberry Shortcake dolls grew to be prized collectables. The number of My Little Pony dolls a girl owned would determine her status on the playground.

Today, however, successful Saturday morning cartoons draw less than two million viewers. What has changed? What has lead to the almost total obliteration of this sacred Saturday morning ritual? Saturday Morning Cartoons have become a thing of the past, due to increased governmental regulations, a greater prevalence of cable and satellite TV, and kids’ evolving preferences.In the late 1960s, parent lobbyist do-gooders, began voicing concerns about the violence, immorality and lack of educational content in Saturday morning cartoons. Classic television entertainment like Tom and Jerry, was attacked for its depiction of violence and lack of political correctness. In the ‘70s, lobbyist pressure increased, causing networks to implement stricter content rules for their animated programs. This restriction limited the development of drama and suspense and hindered artistic expression to the point where basic storylines were repeated over and over and the children watching became too smart for the dumbed down versions of their favorite TV shows. Other lobby group like Action for Children’s Television(ACT), began voicing concerns about the children’s advertising in the late ‘60’s. By 1970, ACT had created a petition for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to ban commercial advertisements from children’s programming all together. ACT also began targeting shows that produced popular toys like G.I. Joes and My Little Pony, which they believed were half-hour commercials. Due to outraged demands of parents, the National Association of Broadcasters was forced to limit commercial time to a mere nine and a half minutes per hour. This made Saturday morning childhood entertainment less profitable for the major television networks.In 1990, the United States Congress passed the Children’s Television Act. The Act  required that all television stations to run at least three hours of educational and informational content every week. New educational childrens shows began to take the place of loveable cartoon favorites. And so, the Saturday morning cartoon line up began to die.NBC and CBS began to replace their Saturday morning lineup with new live-action educational teen entertainment. Shows like Saved by the Bell and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air became more relevant for young viewers. There were very few programs catering specifically to teens and “tweens,” at this time. Thus NBC chose to get away from cartoons all together in order to focus on filling a previously ignored niche. With the introduction of cable TV channels like Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, children’s entertainment has become avaliable 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The Saturday morning timeslot holds no significance for a child who can watch the same show every Tuesday after school.

As cable TV has developed, so have children. Some kids like animation and others do not. Networks have developed show lineups that reflect this immense diversity in kids today. Ratings show that a network will perform better with a mixture of live-action and cartoon shows.

Today, children have more choices than previous generations. It is a huge challenge for networks to get kids to watch television when the Internet, videogames, toys and after school activities are all vying for their attention.  

The Saturday morning ritual that united the kids of the ‘70s and ‘80s may be dying, but not cartoons for kids. Television entertainment for children has never been more prominent. While the Saturday morning cartoon connoisseurs of the past may not revere the cartoons of today, The way we remember Saturday morning cartoon is the same way that the kids today will remember Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network. The only thing that kids have lost is the joy of waking up at ungodly hours to watch Scoobie Doo and The Ghostbusters with 20 million other children.