Most prolific computer-assisted author

Philip M Parker, professor of Management Science at international business school INSEAD (based in France), has written in excess of 200,000 books – only he’s had a little help, in the form of 60–70 computers, a team of programmers and a clever software algorithm he designed. The algorithm gathers information that’s freely available in the public domain and automatically compiles it into book form. The result, as a quick search on Amazon will reveal, is an abundance of titles such as: The Official Patient’s Sourcebook on Spinal Stenosis, Religious Cultures of the World: A Statistical Reference and Cri-Du-Chat Syndrome – A Bibliography and Dictionary for Physicians, Patients and Genome Researchers. His system takes approximately 13 minutes to produce electronic files for each book, which are then printed on-demand. Given the specialist nature of the content, cover prices are often high – for example, £795 (US$1300) in the case of The 2007–2012 World Outlook for Floor Lamps.