Saw a few new aircraft publications by a “Hephaestus Books”, but an ebay seller has this:
Hephaestus Books represents a new publishing paradigm, allowing disparate content sources to be curated into cohesive, relevant, and informative books. To date, this content has been curated from Wikipedia articles and images under Creative Commons licensing, although as Hephaestus Books continues to increase in scope and dimension, more licensed and public domain content is being added.
Sounds like nothing new, just new collection of freely (read not copyrighted) available articles, not new research.
Opinions?
By: smirky - 10th January 2013 at 00:24
Totally agree about a lot of this stuff simply being ripped off the internet and resold without any added value. A lot of ‘books’ that are being advertised by online booksellers fall into this category and are described as such. If this bothers you then do not buy them.
However this is simply paid research which is a service that has existed for years. Furthermore, we should steer well clear of terms like ‘scam’ for legal reasons. 😮
By: Arabella-Cox - 9th January 2013 at 23:57
I think the old time-worn expression is: Money For Old Rope.
Hmm, I wonder how lucrative it? is:diablo:
Anon.
By: pagen01 - 9th January 2013 at 17:47
To my mind this is part of a new ghastly trend of ripping off information from other peoples work and research (often very time consuming & expensive) to make someone a cheap and non researched book.
The sad thing is that it can rip off years of quality research by certain people, but the flip side is that people can also spend money on these books with very poorly researched, and crucially unchecked, information contained within.
Another aspect to worry about is that it’s not just Wiki info that’s being ripped off, it happens to forum information, so a subject speciallist here (say Mk12, Alertken, as examples) can post a huge amount of information and pictures here and risk have it copied and turned into a book.
I believe this has started happening to a prolific poster on the AIX airfield forum, makes you think twice about how much of your research you would want to freely post up.
Personally I also see it as devaluing genuinely researched books by authors that really know what they are talking about.
By: Clint Mitchell - 9th January 2013 at 17:13
There are a few companies like this to watch out for. Their books are actually created by a computer that searches Wiki using keywords and then automatically copies, pastes and then formats and probably even prints the books. You only have to check some of the reviews on Amazon to find out that often their books are complete gobbledygook and make no sense at all. Buy at your own risk or better still don’t touch them with a barge pole. Total and utter scam but also completely legal.
Search Amazon for these authors, they have authored an unbelievable amount of books in their lifetimes ;):
Frederic P. Miller
Agnes F. Vandome
John McBrewster
By: HP111 - 9th January 2013 at 16:59
I agree, seems pointless. Buyer beware, if you don’t read the details carefully enough you could be mislead.
By: Snoopy7422 - 9th January 2013 at 16:52
Why..?
Sounds pretty pointless to me, given one can just look on Wiki-balls. Having tried on many occasions to correct some of the utter rubbish on Wikipedia – and having had it vandalised by so-called ‘editors’ (Read ‘anoraks’), I regard Wiki as a sort of vague starting point. Trustworthy it is not…:rolleyes:
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January 9, 2013 at 4:03 pm