Beware of Crap
In the case you don't know about it, just stay away from a thing called Alphascript publishing.
I've been going to mention this, but I keep on forgetting... Yesterday, I was going through "my" shelves at work. (We all have our own sections we take care of, I have the so-called "small languages"... you know, these tiny languages like Chinese and Hindi and so on... xD That is, small in Finland.) Anyway, checking the Chinese shelf I found something I hadn't seen before, a book called Chinese Sign Language. A small booklet, and I took it out to check what it's like.
...for once, I lack words. First of all, these Alphascript publishing books are simply printed out wikipedia articles. Not edited in any way whatsoever. Secondly, this book that apparently should have been about Chinese sign language... well, it did have the wiki article about that subject too. It also had the articles for workshop, school, farm and so on.
Why would someone who's interested in Chinese sign language want the wikipedia article that tells you that a school "is an institution designed for the teaching of students (or "pupils") under the supervision of teachers"? Seriously. The price of the thing was 59,90 euros. Apparently it had been ordered via our internet site by some customer, who in the end hadn't wanted to get it. I wonder why.... >_>
I stared at it in utter amazement a while, then contacted our buyer and asked what the heck to do with it. He told me to throw it away, invalidate it, in other words. Which I happily did. I don't want to have rubbish like that among my books. Who in their right mind is going pay 60 euros for free wikipedia articles... that don't even have anything to do with the subject matter of the so-called book?
I'm kind of disgusted about it, really.
Wikipedia tells me that Alphascript (and Betascript, Fastbook Publishing and Doyen Verlag) are imprints of VDM publishing that specialize in publishing and selling Wikipedia articles in printed form. It says there that VDM responds to critic that "Wikipedia is a valuable, quality resource, that the company has no problem asking authors for content, that buyers are informed of where information comes from, that books are a convenient form to collect articles about interesting subjects, and that its customers are satisfied with VDM's products."
Customers are satisfied with VDM's products.
...I checked Amazon. Didn't find a single review that'd give an Alphascript publishing book more than one star.
*sigh* I chekced our database, and found out that there's a number of these books available via us... and our internet site has no information about them at all. So if customers order them... they sure don't want to keep them, and it's going to be our loss. I sent the buyer another mail, asking if we could do something about this... don't know the reply yet, cause I had no work today.
If you see a book "written" by Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome, and John McBrewster, stay clear. >_>
I've been going to mention this, but I keep on forgetting... Yesterday, I was going through "my" shelves at work. (We all have our own sections we take care of, I have the so-called "small languages"... you know, these tiny languages like Chinese and Hindi and so on... xD That is, small in Finland.) Anyway, checking the Chinese shelf I found something I hadn't seen before, a book called Chinese Sign Language. A small booklet, and I took it out to check what it's like.
...for once, I lack words. First of all, these Alphascript publishing books are simply printed out wikipedia articles. Not edited in any way whatsoever. Secondly, this book that apparently should have been about Chinese sign language... well, it did have the wiki article about that subject too. It also had the articles for workshop, school, farm and so on.
Why would someone who's interested in Chinese sign language want the wikipedia article that tells you that a school "is an institution designed for the teaching of students (or "pupils") under the supervision of teachers"? Seriously. The price of the thing was 59,90 euros. Apparently it had been ordered via our internet site by some customer, who in the end hadn't wanted to get it. I wonder why.... >_>
I stared at it in utter amazement a while, then contacted our buyer and asked what the heck to do with it. He told me to throw it away, invalidate it, in other words. Which I happily did. I don't want to have rubbish like that among my books. Who in their right mind is going pay 60 euros for free wikipedia articles... that don't even have anything to do with the subject matter of the so-called book?
I'm kind of disgusted about it, really.
Wikipedia tells me that Alphascript (and Betascript, Fastbook Publishing and Doyen Verlag) are imprints of VDM publishing that specialize in publishing and selling Wikipedia articles in printed form. It says there that VDM responds to critic that "Wikipedia is a valuable, quality resource, that the company has no problem asking authors for content, that buyers are informed of where information comes from, that books are a convenient form to collect articles about interesting subjects, and that its customers are satisfied with VDM's products."
Customers are satisfied with VDM's products.
...I checked Amazon. Didn't find a single review that'd give an Alphascript publishing book more than one star.
*sigh* I chekced our database, and found out that there's a number of these books available via us... and our internet site has no information about them at all. So if customers order them... they sure don't want to keep them, and it's going to be our loss. I sent the buyer another mail, asking if we could do something about this... don't know the reply yet, cause I had no work today.
If you see a book "written" by Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome, and John McBrewster, stay clear. >_>