From Professor Garry Whannel

Jay

I sympathise - you also need to be warned of the work of "Lambert M Surhone" - who last time I checked was the "author" of over 250,000 "books".   They are entirely based on bits of Wikipedia entries.

He has published one using as a title my concept "vortextuality".  The book uses the wikipedia entry on vortextuality, followed by entries on princess Diana, celebrity, culture, history, etc.

Despite alerting my publishers, and Amazon, nothing appears to have happened and his "books" are still available.   In this case it may be that a misleading trading case brought by major publishers might be the only strategy to stop them.

But in the meantime we should certainly try and circulate widely details of such scams.

best

Garry
________________________________________
From: Discussion and information list for BSA Sport Study Group Members [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of John Horne [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 12 July 2013 06:41
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Fraudulent study guides that rip off students

From Professor Jay Coakley

For anyone using any part of my text, Sports in Society in a course, it might be a good idea to warn your students of the fraudulent facts 101 study guide available online through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other major online distributors. The publisher is Cram101, which produces dozens, if not hundreds of bogus “guides” for popular texts.
               The cover is designed so that I appear to be the author. But I have nothing to do with this publication and know nothing about the publisher because it has no address, no working phone, and no online contact point or person. Totally anonymous. Very clever.
               The book costs $38 (US). I bought one after receiving scathing emails from students who had done the same and thought I was the source of the scam. The “guide” consists of 433 pages, half of which are lined “notes” pages. The other half are lists of random words and short paragraphs taken from hundreds of sport-related online sites. There is not one thing in the entire guide that has anything to do with my book, apart from Table of Contents chapter titles that approximate my chapter titles. Clever changes were made in the titles to avoid a simple plagiarism suit.
               I’ve spent the last 4 months trying to force the big online sellers to take the book off their sites. Amazon did claim to initiate an investigation that took three months, and they recently told me that Cram 101 admitted they had made some mistakes and were “revising” the guide(!). Of course, neither Amazon nor B&N actually examined the “guide” next to my book, and they would not take my word that it was a rip off. I threatened legal action and said they were knowingly profiting by selling a fraudulent product, but they didn’t seem to be concerned.
               Lawyers have told me that it would cost far more to fight this in a legal arena than I could spend. Therefore, I’m using listserves to spread the word (please send listserve addresses for other professional organizations, but don’t jam their listserves with multiple forwarding). Your students should know that Cram101 has numerous guides and other “help” books for popular texts, so you may want to tell them that the entire company is bogus. If interested, do a search for <Cram101> and see how they have set up their site. They market their “guides” as substitutes for expensive texts: buy the guide and you won’t have to buy the book. I’ve told McGraw-Hill about this but nobody there has responsibility for such things. McGraw-Hill is owned by Apollo Global Management, a private equity company that wants to make its balance sheet look good enough to sell off book lists that don’t meet their profit margins. I’m hoping my book is on the chopping block so I can get the hell away from them.
               So what we have is a situation in which monopoly publishers charge so much for textbooks that they open a door for con artists to sell bogus “guides” to desperate students seeking a way to pass courses without buying textbooks. The con artists hide their identities (try to find one at Cram101.com), so they can make money without facing legal consequences as long as online distributors pimp for them, which they seem happy to do.

Take care,
Jay Coakley

Jay Coakley, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus
Sociology Department
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs

Mailing address:
1107 Heatherwood Lane
Fort Collins, CO 80525 USA

Phone: 970-416-1325; cell: 970-231-6420
Skype: jay.coakley
Website: http://www.uccs.edu/soc/faculty-profiles/jay-coakley.html
Email: [log in to unmask]