Books that don't exist, but are selling well!

Here're two stories of phantom books that weren't written by their authors, but took on lives of their own thanks to book databases.

Jim Crace writes in The Guardian about his phantom novel.

I am overjoyed to discover that my latest novel, Useless America (a catchy and fashionable title) was published at the end of September in a hardcover edition by Viking Penguin. It's a snip at £16.99 for 224 pages. How do I know? Amazon have emailed any of its customers who previously bought my books.

The only hitch is that Useless America is a phantom book - and its not even a phantom of my own creation.

I do have a new novel in the wings. It is called The Pesthouse but it won't be published until next March and by Picador rather than Viking Penguin, who held the original licence. It's set in America's medieval future and is an inquiry into my - and the world's - love-hate relationship with the United States. When Penguin contracted me to write the novel a few years ago, I had not yet decided on a title. But the first line of the book was going to be "This used to be America". It was convenient to use that as a working designation. Nobody would know or care except me, my agent and my editor.

Now we are in the world of guesswork. When the book was "announced" all those years ago, someone at Penguin couldn't type, possibly, or someone at Amazon was hard of hearing. "Used to" became "Useless", an amusing error. But an error with a life of its own. The Amazon computer sucked the information in, fleshed it out, nurtured it, gave it provenance.

Anyway, Useless America, complete with its own ISBN number, is now available for purchase. I am almost certain that not a word of it exists. Order your copy, while stocks last.

Tim O'Reilly writes on his blog - O'Reilly Radar - about the a similar problem faced by O'Reilly Media as a result of "the peristence of (bad) online data."

Comments

[Vikram sathish]

many books of same author & published by same publishers is Given either as exclusive or reprint to many wholesalers in india. many a times its difficult for book seller's to source the books as the concept of exclusive distribution & Imports are not organised in India. Books are available even with distributors who dont deal with those publishers & Indian subsidary.

even many indian subsidaries of well known Publishers in reality act only as book wholesaler's in India, they dont even hold minimum inventory of books which sell less.

alot of publishers even the wellknown dont do merchandising & marketing.
many publisher's representatives & executives even respond to small orders.this result in Infiltration of stocks through worldwide wholesalers,if this bouncing orders are catered with intrest total book sales in india would be much more higher than what it is today