Talk:Books LLC

This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Companies Low‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Companies, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of companies on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CompaniesWikipedia:WikiProject CompaniesTemplate:WikiProject Companiescompany articles

Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

WikiProject Companies To-do:

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Article requests : Wikipedia:Requested articles/Business and economics/Companies
Assess : Category:Unassessed company articles
Copyedit : Category:Company articles needing attention
Infobox : Category:Company articles needing infoboxes
Maintain : Portal:Companies
Stubs : Help expand stub articles located at Category:Company stubs
Other :
- Tag company articles with the {{portal|Companies}} template
- Tag company talk pages with the {{WikiProject Companies}} project banner
- Answer requests for comments

Tennessee Low‑importance

	Tennessee portal Books LLC is within the scope of WikiProject Tennessee, an open collaborative effort to coordinate work for and sustain comprehensive coverage of Tennessee and related subjects in the Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, and even become a member. [Project Articles] • [Project Page] • [Project Talk] • [Assessment] • [Template Usage]TennesseeWikipedia:WikiProject TennesseeTemplate:WikiProject TennesseeTennessee articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Wikipedia Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Wikipedia, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's encyclopedic coverage of itself. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page. Please remember to avoid self-references and maintain a neutral point of view, even on topics relating to Wikipedia.WikipediaWikipedia:WikiProject WikipediaTemplate:WikiProject WikipediaWikipedia articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Books

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Books. To participate in the project, please visit its page, where you can join the project and discuss matters related to book articles. To use this banner, please refer to the documentation. To improve this article, please refer to the relevant guideline for the type of work.BooksWikipedia:WikiProject BooksTemplate:WikiProject BooksBook articles

This article was nominated for deletion on 18 February 2011 (UTC). The result of the discussion was keep.

NPOV

"true Wiki-spirit". "Apologies are offered". This is an atrocious page, that is a warning not an encyclopaedia article. We already have User:Fences and windows/Unreliable sources#Wikipedia mirrors (and everything that that links to) and Project:Mirrors and forks/Abc#Books, LLC. The article namespace is for encyclopaedia articles, not for warnings. Uncle G (talk) 13:01, 6 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

WARNING

These guys sell wikipedia content to unsuspecting losers I think that should be made clear. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.231.216.82 (talk) 11:18, 12 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Unbelievable

This company is selling articles I've written or contributed to in book form at Barnes & Noble.[1] I wonder how many titles I'm in since they're selling thousands of these. DinDraithou (talk) 20:47, 16 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've just discovered this "publisher" after seeing many of my friends articles published for profit. Why won't wikipedia limit articles to "for eductaional, non commercial use only"

WTF?! http://convozine.com/929-holographic-universe/c/23083 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.220.197.182 (talk) 10:28, 2 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Tell me about - while searching Google Books I just stumbled across a book published by these guys that contains a Wiki article that I wrote. I wonder if a class action lawsuit is in order? Cagwinn (talk) 14:51, 7 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is a free encyclopedia. It has copyright notices all over the place with regard to how your work may be used. Commercial work is permitted. If you don't like it, don't contribute. Rklawton (talk) 18:49, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes but people may not be aware that they have to apply for a license to protect their work so if it is used commercially by someone they have to seek your permission. However still a nice little earner for those who use the loophole to cream off money from your work providing they are selling your work without your knowledge--Navops47 (talk) 06:14, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Scam

How is this not a scam? They're making money by ripping off free content. Electricbassguy (talk) 06:56, 11 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is allowed usage: [2] "note that these licenses do allow commercial uses of your contributions"; and when you or any wikipedia author contributes, such license is used.

Controversial

Unless we have a source that says this organization is "controversial" we need to leave it out as it's just a personal opinion. Rklawton (talk) 18:48, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The words used in the already-cited sources include "rip-off", "surprised" and "astonished" customers, the reviews are "littered with complaints", "fake", "stolen", "vanity publishing at its worst", and "Amazon is investigating" among other disparaging comments. I think that controversial is a very restrained summary of the sources actual opinions. Furthermore, your (IMO unfounded) objection to the single word controversial is no justification for removing the amply sourced statement that they re-print Wikipedia articles instead of writing their own books. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:23, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As per long-standing Wikipedia practice, customer reviews are absolutely not considered to be reliable sources - and "controversial" derived from these reviews is a classic violation of SYNTH. Rklawton (talk) 15:55, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You haven't looked at the sources, have you? The newspaper articles are the ones that say reviews are littered with complaints. For example, the first newspaper article says:

But several customers – and subjects – expressed surprise.
Reviews of Books LLC editions on Amazon have been littered with complaints about the content of purchases.

It is not "a classic violation of SYNTH" to report what newspaper articles say about customer reviews. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:58, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Here are two additional publications that seem to have merit for referencing Books LLC being controversial. The Washington Post article seems very reliable. Also note that Books LLC is mentioned by name in the Wikipedia article Amazon.com controversies, which seems to establish acceptance of the issue.

"Publisher 'Books LLC' Makes Money From Wiki Articles". Convozine. 2011. Retrieved 2013-04-26.

Gene Weingarten (September 12, 2010). "The book on Gene: It's less than you expect". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2013-04-26. Pinethicket (talk) 20:25, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Inside Books LLC: German indepth review of three of these books

You can take a look into three of those controversial books (Bucher LLC and betascript) by using the following link:

Andreas Weigel: Warnung vor Verlagen, die mit überteuerten Wikipedia-Artikel-Sammelbänden einen einträglichen Etikettenschwindel betreiben.

Andreas Weigel: Zweifelhafte „James Joyce“-Publikation mit Austriaca-Schwerpunkt (Eine mit Musterseiten illustrierte Warnung von Andreas Weigel).

Abstract: "In the last two years the catalogues of online bookshops in the German speaking world were flooded with books that are rather expensive, while they consist solely of articles from the German version of Wikipedia. Some of these books seem to be very interesting, as their titles suggest to offer profound studies of topics that have often been neglected in research so far. Including reviews of three such books, this report aims at alerting librarians to the problem and to keep them from buying books by publishers such as alphascript, betascript, “Books LLC” and “Bucher Gruppe”: these publishing houses only print books on demand which are not worth our money." --Popmuseum (talk) 15:35, 26 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts UK

This company has lifted the article Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts from 2010 and is re-selling it on Google Books here: http://books.google.lk/books?id=y_LFcQAACAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s.--Navops47 (talk) 05:58, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Don't know how they have managed to compile a 120 page book out if unless they are lifting stuff from the official site http://www.mountview.org.uk/ which has plenty of material if true then that would be a different matter as its copyrighted © 2015 Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts. Registered Charity No: 274166. Incorporated in England No: 01019858. Registered Office: Kingfisher Place,Clarendon Road, London N22 6XF. --Navops47 (talk) 06:20, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

More interesting stuff from their website FAQ section which is copyrighted "Wikipedia and Wikia are free. Why should I buy a book with Wiki content?

Our Wiki books are bought mainly by libraries and people who prefer to read a paperback than a computer screen.
The typical 100 page book has more than 200 articles and a table of contents by subject and title. You might have a hard time locating those articles without" So what have they compiled the 200+ articles from for this book unless you are stealing original copyrighted content, also this when you want buy their license: "I'm a publisher. Can we buy foreign rights for one of your books? Since we are a global publisher, we don't sell foreign rights to our books. But if you would like to distribute our books in your country, please let us know". So you can't re-sell their books--Navops47 (talk) 06:35, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

cheaters never prosper?

I am a metaphoric dinosaur. Given a choice, I prefer my reference works to be in bound stacks of paper. But using that sentiment to rationalize scammers such as Books LLC is far past mere absurdity.

Every time I revise, update, source, or expand a W'pedia article, I smile a little to think of the fools who've overpaid these pirates for outdated, incomplete information and who (trapped by sunk cost) will likely refer to it for years after it's become irrelevant or even entirely wrong. If I happen to read a credible criticism that aligns with these sentiments, I will happily bring it into this article, though I hope others will get here first.
Weeb Dingle (talk) 07:55, 29 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Site down, history

The site is down now and the last time Internet Archive archived it was June 2022. The site has hardly changed in 10 years. See these versions -

This company gets some attention for its Wikipedia-related business model. Because of lack of sources, small size, and lack of ongoing sources which connect this to Wikipedia, I am delinking it from a template on Wikipedia history. Bluerasberry (talk) 18:24, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]