A couple of years ago I encountered some type of advertisement for a particular book. I don’t recall what the exact title was, but it was something along the lines of “The 2004 Outlook for Thingamajiggers in the United States.” I also don’t recall the price, but it was some incredible amount of money, like $500 or so. I remember being intrigued, as well as a little put off, by the ad, and was never quite able to wrap my brain around it.
I think I just found out a great deal about where that book came from. Speed Writing is an article in the Guardian newspaper that details the writing and publishing of one particular author: Philip M. Parker. Take a look at the following numbers:
- Philip M. Parker is shown as being the author of 85,747 books on Amazon.com (at this moment).
- 9,536 of those fall into the Business and Investing category, which seems to contain a great many books like the one I encountered years ago.
- These are not pamphlets or smallish books; one of the publications I checked weighs in at 710 pages.
- Parker claims that his total number of published books is in the area of 200,000 (per the Guardian article), an
- It takes him approximately 20 minutes to write each book, using a machine he invented.
The article doesn’t go into any detail about the machine; it is saving that for a follow-up article next week. As the article was published last Tuesday, I expect it will be five more days before we learn more.
found on if:book
