Verlag Dr. Mueller
Encyclopedia
VDM Publishing is a German publishing group based in Saarbrücken
Saarbrücken
Saarbrücken is the capital of the state of Saarland in Germany. The city is situated at the heart of a metropolitan area that borders on the west on Dillingen and to the north-east on Neunkirchen, where most of the people of the Saarland live....

, Germany, with offices in Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

, Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...

, Mauritius
Mauritius
Mauritius , officially the Republic of Mauritius is an island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent in the southwest Indian Ocean, about east of Madagascar...

 and Moldova
Moldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...

. Submissions are neither peer reviewed nor edited. Its book production is based on print on demand
Print on demand
Print on demand , sometimes called, in error, publish on demand, is a printing technology and business process in which new copies of a book are not printed until an order has been received...

 technology.

The first publishing house of the group, Verlag Dr Müller, was founded in Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...

 in 2002 by Wolfgang Philipp Müller (usually named Dr. Wolfgang P. Müller) and was transferred to Saarbrücken in August 2005. The Mauritian office was established in April 2007 and was managed from 2008 up until May 2011 by David Benoit Novel; since June 2011, this office is directed by Reezwan Ghanty and Laurent Ribet. In 2007, the group began distributing its publications through Lightning Source
Lightning Source
Lightning Source is a subsidiary of leading U.S. publishing services company Saab Content Group. The company is the leading printer and distributor of print-on-demand books. Originally incorporated in 1997 as Lightning Print Inc., the company is headquartered in La Vergne, Tennessee. Its UK...

, Amazon
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...

, Amazon.co.uk and the German company Books on Demand.

VDM publishing's imprint
Imprint
In the publishing industry, an imprint can mean several different things:* As a piece of bibliographic information about a book, it refers to the name and address of the book's publisher and its date of publication as given at the foot or on the verso of its title page.* It can mean a trade name...

s—Alphascript, Betascript, Fastbook Publishing and Doyen Verlag—specialize in publishing and selling Wikipedia articles in printed form via print on demand, in e-commerce bookstores. Alphascript distributes publications through several on-line book retailers. At least some of the books are actually printed by Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...

. As of November 2010, around 150,000 such titles have been produced. In June 2010, VDM started its own online-bookshop: MoreBooks! Publishing.

VDM's publishing methods have received criticism for the soliciting of manuscripts from thousands of individuals, for providing non-notable authors with the appearance of a peer-reviewed publishing history, for benefiting from the free contributions of online volunteers, and for insufficiently disclosing the free nature of their content. VDM responds that Wikipedia is a valuable, quality resource, that the company has no problem asking authors for content, that buyers are informed of where information comes from, that books are a convenient form to collect articles about interesting subjects, and that its customers are satisfied with VDM's products.

VDM Publishing

VDM Publishing specializes in German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 and English dissertations, theses
Thesis
A dissertation or thesis is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings...

 and research projects. Its services are free to authors. Their business model involves a team of acquisitions editors, who search the internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 for academic authors and invite them by e-mail
E-mail
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...

 for their manuscripts. VDM sends emails to thousands of people who have written a master's thesis or doctoral dissertation and whose college library has a web-accessible catalog. According to the Michigan Tech Thesis and Dissertation FAQ: VDM Verlag is a legitimate publisher and their emails are not a scam; their books, however, are not peer reviewed and do not significantly enhance a student's publication record.

In April 2010, VDM started an imprint devoted to religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...

, spirituality
Spirituality
Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...

 and Christian theology
Christian theology
- Divisions of Christian theology :There are many methods of categorizing different approaches to Christian theology. For a historical analysis, see the main article on the History of Christian theology.- Sub-disciplines :...

: Fromm Verlag. In October 2010, Dictus Publishing was launched to publish political texts related to European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...

. In 2011, the imprint JustFiction! (also spelled Just Fiction!) began publishing novels and short stories of new yet unpublished authors. , there are 2 JustFiction! kindle books listed on Amazon.com.

Editorial policies

VDM claims to be able to produce a new book in a six week process, two weeks for cover and four weeks for production. There is no cost to the author, who receives one free copy of the book. VDM, "tend[s] not to edit works" assuming manuscript
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...

s they accept "are already of a high standard". Proofreading is not performed to keep costs low. In 2010, the publishing house Verlag Dr Müller claimed to publish annually more than 10,000 new titles and thus to be "one of the leading publishing houses of academic research". In 2011, VDM Group in its whole claims to release 50,000 new book titles per month and to be the largest book publisher in the world.

Criticism

VDM's business practices have been criticized for profiting from the sale of unacclaimed works and for insufficiently disclosing that content is available for free elsewhere. In November, 2009 an article in the Swiss newspaper Berner Zeitung
Berner Zeitung
Berner Zeitung is a regional newspaper in the canton of Berne, Switzerland. With a distribution of 165,700 , it is number four of the daily newspapers in Switzerland and the leading newspaper in the Canton of Berne...

 described VDM's practices as controversial and bordering on deception. The paper faulted VDM for not disclosing that the books it was publishing were academic dissertations, for publishing mediocre works that received just a barely passing grade, and for charging high prices. American writer Victoria Strauss
Victoria Strauss
Victoria Strauss is the author of eight fantasy novels for adults and young adults, including the Stone duology and the Way of Arata duology...

 characterized VDM Publishing as "an academic author mill
Author mill
An author mill is a publisher that relies on producing large numbers of small-run books by different authors, as opposed to a smaller number of works published in larger numbers...

", while Pagan Kennedy
Pagan Kennedy
Pagan Kennedy is an author and pioneer of the 1990s zine movement, along with writer/publishers like Lisa Crystal Carver of Rollerderby, Jim Goad of ANSWER Me! and Larry Crane of Tape Op. Her autobiographical zine Pagan's Head detailed her life...

 notes that VDM's practices are comparable to a form of kudzu
Kudzu
Kudzu is a plant in the genus Pueraria in the pea family Fabaceae, subfamily Faboideae. It is a climbing, coiling, and trailing vine native to southern Japan and southeast China. Its name comes from the Japanese name for the plant, . It is a weed that climbs over trees or shrubs and grows so...

 proliferation in book publishing.

In a 2009 interview published on the VDM website, CEO Wolfgang Philipp Müller, explained the aggressive reputation of VDM Publishing: "We make an approach to our authors offering to publish their work. That's not good manners in the distinguished publishing sector. On the other hand, our customers are totally satisfied with our publishing service.”

Alphascript and Betascript Publishing

Alphascript Publishing (created in April 2009), Betascript Publishing (created in January 2010), Fastbook Publishing (created in July 2009) and Doyen Verlag (created in April 2010) are imprints of VDM Publishing, which publish and sell collections of freely available Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...

 articles as expensive printed-on-demand books. Alphascript lists amazon.de, amazon.co.uk, amazon.com, knv.de, libri.de, schaltungsdienst.de, bod.de, VDM, VSG, ingrambook.com, umbreit.de, reha Marketing, smartprofessionals.de, xing.de
Xing
Xing may refer to:* an abbreviation for crossing, primarily used in North America* Qiao Xing Universal Telephone Inc. * XING, a social network platform* Xing County, in Shanxi, China* Xing - A Korean boyband...

, lightningsource.com
Lightning Source
Lightning Source is a subsidiary of leading U.S. publishing services company Saab Content Group. The company is the leading printer and distributor of print-on-demand books. Originally incorporated in 1997 as Lightning Print Inc., the company is headquartered in La Vergne, Tennessee. Its UK...

, bischoffundpartner.de as business partner
Business partner
Business partner is a term used to denote a commercial entity with which another commercial entity has some form of alliance. This relationship may be a highly contractual, exclusive bond in which both entities commit not to ally with third parties...

s. These books have been inadvertently purchased by German libraries at the request of their patrons, and by Flemish libraries.
These titles are published as edited by Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome, and John McBrewster who are also listed as authors. , there are over 77,000 titles listed on Amazon.com. Betascript lists "Lambert M. Surhone, Miriam T. Timpledon, Susan F. Marseken, Mariam T. Tennoe and Susan F. Henssonow" as editors, giving an additional 69,500 titles .

Alphascript defends its publishing methods: "There is hardly another platform for quick and better processing of information than Wikipedia" for customers "who want to be informed on a specific subject" in book form, though they can "have online everything free of charge." In response to an interview question about whether all of Alphascript’s books take their content from Wikipedia, Alphascript responded, "Yes, since we believe that the quality of the Wikipedia-articles is so good that it is worthwhile creating books with them. Wikipedia themselves give an impulse for this. The articles published on their sites are free in every respect and without any limitations as to further use. All authors participating in texts of Wikipedia know this or should at least know it." In response to whether this should be made clear in the product description, Alphascript responded, "It is pointed out in every Alphascript book that contents are Wikipedia articles. Do we now have to write in Amazon-books: “Attention! Books contains Wikipedia!”? Then other publishing houses would have to point out in their books: “Attention! Book contains nonsense!”, or: “Attention! Book has only sex-scenario!” VDM have also been criticised for "fraud" in selling printed Wikipedia articles to libraries. A further criticism is their large number of works (22,000) edited by the same editor(s).

Multiplication of imprint names

In the beginning of 2011 the number of imprints suddenly increased. , there are 38 imprints entirely devoted to the reproduction of Wikipedia content.
Imprint Editor names Year of creation Language Number of titles
in June 2011
Reference
Acu Publishing Evander Luther 2011 English, French 408
Alphascript Publishing Frederic P. Miller
Agnes F. Vandome
John McBrewster
2009 English, French 176919
Anim Publishing Norton Fausto Garfield 2011 English, French 433
Aud Publishing Eldon A. Mainyu 2011 English, French 443
Bellum Publishing Othniel Hermes 2011 English, French 419
Betascript Publishing Lambert M. Surhone
Miriam T. Timpledon
Susan F. Marseken
Mariam T. Tennoe
Susan F. Henssonow
2010 English, French, German 319214
Brev Publishing Germain Adriaan 2011 English, French 414
Cede Publishing Barnabas Cristóbal 2011 English, French 481
Ceed Publishing Aaron Philippe Toll 2011 English, French 527
Cel Publishing Iustinus Tim Avery 2011 English, French 393
Chromo Publishing Adam Cornelius Bert 2011 English, French 383
Chrono Press Pollux Évariste Kjeld 2011 English, French 457
Civ Zheng Cirino 2011 English, French 434
Claud Press Lóegaire Humphrey 2011 English, French 433
Commun Stefanu Elias Aloysius 2011 English, French 421
Cred Press Iosias Jody 2011 English, French 439
Crypt Publishing Hardmod Carlyle Nicolao 2011 English, French 434
Culp Press Nethanel Willy 2011 English, French 505
Dicho Delmar Thomas C. Stawart 2011 English, French 396
Dic Press Dismas Reinald Apostolis 2011 English, French 425
Dict Knútr Benoit 2011 English, French 493
Dign Press Kristen Nehemiah Horst 2011 English, French 391
Doyen Verlag Miscellaneous names 2010 German 69
Duc Jordan Naoum 2011 English, French 415
Duct Publishing Jerold Angelus 2011 English, French 443
Equ Press Wade Anastasia Jere 2011 English, French 512
FastBook Publishing Miscellaneous names 2009 English, French, German, Russian 1754
Fec Publishing Columba Sara Evelyn 2011 English, French 467
Fer Publishing Waylon Christian Terryn 2011 English, French 397
Fidel Christabel Donatienne Ruby 2011 English, French 428
Flu Press Gerd Numitor 2011 English, French 423
Frac Press Harding Ozihel 2011 English, French 487
Ject Press Carleton Olegario Máximo 2011 English, French 401
JUNCT Emory Christer 2011 English, French 423
Lect Publishing Nuadha Trev 2011 English, French 473
Loc Publishing Timoteus Elmo 2011 English, French 386
Log Press Terrence James Victorino 2011 English, French 464
Miss Press Niek Yoan 2011 English, French 444

VDM Group subsidiaries (date of creation and headquarters in brackets)

VDM Group has 23 subsidiaries:

Publishing houses

  • VDM Verlag Dr. Müller GmbH & Co. KG (2002, Saarbrücken, Germany)
  • LAP Lambert Academic Publishing GmbH & Co. KG (Saarbrücken, Germany)
  • Südwestdeutscher Verlag für Hochschulschriften GmbH & Co. KG (Saarbrücken
    Saarbrücken
    Saarbrücken is the capital of the state of Saarland in Germany. The city is situated at the heart of a metropolitan area that borders on the west on Dillingen and to the north-east on Neunkirchen, where most of the people of the Saarland live....

    , Germany)
  • EUE Editions Universitaires Européennes (2010, Saarbrücken, Germany)
  • Verlag Classic Edition (2009, Saarbrücken, Germany)
  • Saarbrücker Verlag für Rechtswissenschaften (2009, Saarbrücken, Germany)
  • EAE Editorial Académica Española (2011, Saarbrücken, Germany)
  • PUA Publicaciones Universitarias Argentinas (2011, Saarbrücken, Germany)
  • Fromm Verlag (2010, Saarbrücken, Germany)
  • Dictus Publishing (2010, Saarbrücken, Germany)
  • JustFiction! Edition (2011, Saarbrücken, Germany)
  • Doyen Verlag (2010, Saarbrücken, Germany)
  • FastBook Publishing (2009, Beau-Bassin, Mauritius
    Mauritius
    Mauritius , officially the Republic of Mauritius is an island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent in the southwest Indian Ocean, about east of Madagascar...

    )
  • Alphascript Publishing (2009, Beau-Bassin, Mauritius)
  • Betascript Publishing (2010, Beau-Bassin, Mauritius)

Service industries

  • VDM Publishing House Ltd renamed in 2011 as International Book Market Service Ltd (2008, Beau-Bassin, Mauritius)
  • VDM Verlagsservicegesellschaft mbH (2008, Saarbrücken, Germany)
  • VDM IT-Dienstleistungen GmbH & Co. KG (2008, Saarbrücken, Germany)
  • MoreBooks! Publishing GmbH (2009, Chişinău
    Chisinau
    Chișinău is the capital and largest municipality of Moldova. It is also its main industrial and commercial centre and is located in the middle of the country, on the river Bîc...

    , Moldova
    Moldova
    Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...

    )
  • Morebooks! The online bookshop (2010, Saarbrücken, Germany)
  • BetterBooks! Publishing GmbH (2011, Saarbrücken, Germany)
  • NicerBooks! Publishing GmbH (2011, Saarbrücken, Germany)
  • VDM Verwaltung Aktiengesellschaft (Saarbrücken, Germany)

See also

  • Alphascript Publishing book by Miller FP, Vandome AF, McBrewster J: a scanned example
  • Philip M. Parker
    Philip M. Parker
    Philip M. Parker holds the INSEAD Chair Professorship of Management Science at INSEAD . He has patented a method to automatically produce a set of similar books from a template which is filled with data from database and internet searches...

  • Books LLC
    Books LLC
    Books LLC is an American publisher and a book sales club based in Memphis, Tennessee.-Print on demand and electronic products:Books LLC publishes print on demand paperback and downloadable compilations of English texts and documents from open knowledge sources such as Wikipedia. Books LLC's copy...

  • Print on demand

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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