G40 book........ I think?

[ereeiz]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Volkswagen-Polo-G40-Herausgegeben-Von-Surhone-Lambert-/140681367387?pt=Non_Fiction&hash=item20c1434f5b#ht_500wt_1203

What's that then? Anyone got it? It says "High quality content by Wikipedia articles" on the cover. It can't just be cut and pasted from there for £35 surely? I wonder what it's about, and if it's in English or not, haha.

[hayesey]

looks very weird.  Not really sure how you'd write enough stuff about a g40 to fill an entire book.  Unless it's only about ten pages long!  If it is just stuff lifted off wikipedia then it wont be very long.

all just seems very weird, like the picture on the cover, there's not even a g40 in it.  And it says "G-Lader, Internal Combustion Engine, Cubic Centimetre".. whats that all about?  cubic centimetre?  Just random words that are loosely related to a car? 

[ereeiz]

I wonder if it's the Ebay equivalent of spam bots, taking random words freom threads and pasting together in the hope someone will click the link/ buy it! lol

[Alex]

I wouldn't want a book based on Wikipedia articles. It's fine as a basic point of reference but not the be-all-and-end-all of information. There have been several occasions where Margaret Thatcher's entry has said she was fictitious.

Plus when I worked on a certain magazine, we changed the word 'tuning' on a certain rival magazine's page to say 'felching' - so for about six months this magazine was 'a leading title covering the felching market' according to Wikipedia.

Random authors and picture of a Volvo S40 doesn't scream high quality publication to me, either. And why would anyone pay £35 for a book about the G40???

[Alex]

ISBN is genuine:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Volkswagen-Polo-G40/dp/6131413665/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1328219299&sr=1-1

[Alex]

Ooh, more info:
http://www.chrisrand.com/blog/index.php/2010/02/27/odd-tale-alphascript-publishing-betascript-publishing/

So it's an automatically generated book, made up of the Polo G40 article and everything linked to it

Again, why would you BUY a book full of Wiki articles when you can just read Wikipedia???

[hayesey]

how bizarre!

[ereeiz]

Nice work! Saved me from looking it up, well.... I'd ask my old man anyway, he's a publisher and normally gets all sorts of weird an wonderful stuff. I'll see if he can blag a copy and let you know how crap it is lol