Books - Bloggercises

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Philip Parker is at it again.

Parker, a marketing professor at the INSEAD business school in France, has been in the news before as the most prolific author in the history of publishing. He has more than 100,000 books listed under his name on amazon.com, and claims to have published more than 200,000 in total.

For more on his patented computer algorithms (another way of saying his laptop writes books while he sleeps), see our earlier report here.

Now he is in the news again, being named by The Bookseller as the winner of the 2009 Oddest Book Title of the Year prize. The prize-winning book title is: The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais.

Published by the author's own Icon Group International, the book is available at amazon.com for US$795, Professor Parker's pricing policies being as quirky as his book-naming conventions.
www.readersread.com

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Books

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World wide words

March 14th 2009 00:42

One of the things novice bloggers don't get warned about is the danger of touching people.

I have a friend who wrote a non-fiction book which sold well around the world. I have a relative who was talking one day to a woman terminally ill with cancer, who said one consequence was that she had stopped reading fiction and had turned to books which taught her something about the world. And then she mentioned my friend's book as an example.

I reported this story to my friend, the author of the book, who paused a moment and then said, "You write something, and when you are finished it takes on a life of its own."

If you create a blog and write in it, the same thing will happen. It may be to a greater or lesser extent, but the words in your blog posts will go out into the world and touch people. And you will have no control over the process or consequences.

A few months ago I wrote a post on Vyoos about a 16-year-old boy in England who had been fired from his part-time cleaning job because he was, according to English regulations, too young to operate a vacuum cleaner. The boy recently found my blog post and left a friendly comment, saying in part that he had been surprised at how much publicity the incident had received.

More recently I wrote another Vyoos post about a New Zealand chocolatier who produces some exotically innovative products, including an aphrodisiac chocolate. I advocated a fountain-of-youth chocolate for her next project. A few days later she left a comment on my blog thanking me for the suggestion and inviting me to sign up for her newsletter, in which "your comments will always be welcome".

The most recent, and the most special, was a comment on a Zoomies post by fellow Orble blogger Queenie, who has had a lifelong fear of greyhounds after bad experiences in her childhood. My blog about my two gentle greyhounds, she said, had after all these years banished the fear. That is awesome.

So if you are new to blogging, let this be a warning to you: your words will take on a life of their own; they will march out into the unknown and touch people in unexpected ways.
image: www.treehugger.com

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Blogging, Books, Writing

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Book spammer or pioneering educator?

December 26th 2008 11:24

Philip Parker has more than 100,000 books listed under his name on amazon.com, and claims to have published more than 200,000 in total.

Parker is a marketing professor at the INSEAD business school in France. He uses patented computer algorithms to copy information online and compile it into "studies" on niche subjects.

Subjects of his books have included the econometric outlook for bath mats in India and thesauruses for eight indigenous Australian languages.

Professor Parker, who has undergraduate degrees in mathematics, biology and economics and a PhD in business economics, and who is dyslexic, is both admired and criticised for his publishing feats. He has been labelled a book spammer and a pioneering educator.

All I want to know is, can I use his method to get my novel finished?

www.theage.com.au, en.wikipedia.org

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Books

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