{"id":302,"date":"2008-04-16T12:33:07","date_gmt":"2008-04-16T19:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2008\/04\/it-doesnt-take-any-brains-to-be-an-author\/"},"modified":"2008-04-16T12:41:29","modified_gmt":"2008-04-16T19:41:29","slug":"it-doesnt-take-any-brains-to-be-an-author","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2008\/04\/16\/it-doesnt-take-any-brains-to-be-an-author\/","title":{"rendered":"It Doesn’t Take Any Brains To Be An Author"},"content":{"rendered":"

from the NY Times<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

He Wrote 200,000 Books (but Computers Did Some of the Work)<\/nyt_headline><\/h1>\n

<\/p>\n

Sandy Huffaker for The New York Times<\/p>\n

Philip Parker says he has computers do the substantial amount of repetitive work that is required in the writing of so many books.<\/span><\/p>\n

By\u00a0NOAM COHEN\u00a0<\/a>Published: April 14, 2008<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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\u2019s the back cover.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Oh, and there is all that stuff in the middle, too. The writing.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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<\/a>\u00a0under his publishing company shows, making him, in his own words, \u201cthe most published author in the history of the planet.\u201d And he makes money doing it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Among the books published under his name are \u201cThe Official Patient\u2019s Sourcebook on Acne Rosacea\u201d ($24.95 and 168 pages long); \u201cStickler Syndrome: A Bibliography and Dictionary for Physicians, Patients and Genome Researchers<\/a>\u201d ($28.95 for 126 pages); and \u201cThe 2007-2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India\u201d ($495 for 144 pages).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 broad or obscure \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

If this sounds like cheating to the layman\u2019s ear, it does not to Mr. Parker, who holds some provocative \u2014 and apparently profitable \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And he is laying the groundwork for romance novels generated by new algorithms. \u201cI\u2019ve already set it up,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are only so many body parts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 where the first letter of a series of words spells a synonym of those words, often to ironic effect.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course, one of the difficulties of generating a hundred thousand poems is stepping back and assessing their quality.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you think one of them is Shakespeare?\u201d he was asked.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d he said. \u201cOnly because I haven\u2019t done sonnets yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

[ click to view full article at NY Times<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from the NY Times 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\u00a0NOAM COHEN\u00a0Published: April 14, 2008 \u00a0 It\u2019s not easy to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}