Suppose you’d written a book. And suppose, for some odd reason, that your middle name happened to be “And”. Suppose, for example, that mother had named you “Cary And Grant”.
Then the software at Amazon.com, not unreasonably, would assume that you were two people, and would list the book’s authors as (1) Cary and (2) Grant.
Now suppose, even more oddly, that your name contained a comma. Not the word “comma”, but the actual punctuation mark. Suppose, for example, that your mother had named you “Cary, Grant”. Then Amazon’s software, again not unreasonably, would assume that your name was being presented in the format “Last, First” and would reverse the order, listing the author as Grant Cary.
Now take this one step further and suppose your name contained both the word “And” and a comma. Perhaps more than once. Suppose, for example, that your name happened to be The Fresh, Chilled and Frozen Horse and Ass Meat Research Group. Then, in accordance with its not unreasonable rules, Amazon’s software would conclude that there are three separate authors, namely:
- Chilled the Fresh
- Frozen Horse
- Ass Meat Research Group
Now suppose that eventually, someone at Amazon became aware of this error and hit some sort of a button to make the software re-parse the word “And”. But suppose it didn’t quite work, first because the software re-parsed only the first “And”, and second because the re-parsing was even worse than the original. You might get something like this:
As it happens, Ass Meat Research Group is the highly prolific co-author of 88 different entries in the Amazon catalog, with a variety of collaborators including not just Frozen Horse and Chilled the Fresh but the almost equally prolific Sheep the Edible Offals Of. (At least there are 88 entries as of this writing, and will presumably continue to be unless this blog entry triggers a further correction, an outcome devoutly to be unwished.) Every one of these 88 entries is priced at $325 and most are in the 20 to 30 page range. Despite the high prices, they must be very popular, because several are listed as Temporarily Out of Stock.
This makes me want to join Facebook just so I can list “Ass Meat Research Group” among my favorite authors.
A tip of the hat to my friend Aaron Mandel, who somehow discovered this. No, I don’t know what he was searching for.
Edited to add: Apparently as a result of this blog post, Amazon has removed all records of these authors from its database. See here for my lament.
I’ve been a big fan of, and stockholder in, Amazon for many years. After reading this, I don’t know whether to sell immediately or just keep laughing and double down…:-)
Metadata seems to be a harder problem than anticipated– or, at least, more error-prone. Here‘s another example– this one from Google Scholar.
And this entry made it to Language Log
A fine propinquity of blogs :)
Just one of the many reasons I am such a fierce proponent of the serial comma!
I think in this case if the serial comma had been used – The Fresh, Chilled, and Frozen Horse and Ass Meat Research Group – Amazon would have just turned it into four authors rather than three:
The Fresh
Chilled
Frozen Horse
Ass Meat Research Group
A friend of mine has the first name Or. Apparently this is a common name in his native Hebrew. But transliterated into English, it’s constantly breaking databases and causing weird results. He sees this as partially an annoyance, and partially a point of pride.
Credit where due, which I regret not laying out before: I discovered these authors years ago via Ray Davis, who in turn ascribed it to Beth Rust.
http://www.pseudopodium.org/ht-20011002.html#2001-10-09
Aw shucks. I’ll take credit.
I’m the one who told the person who told Beth Rust who told Ray Davis who told Aaron who told Steve.
You’re welcome, all.
Haha, Little Bobby Tables meets world! (http://xkcd.com/327/)
I guess I’m dumb, but I don’t understand why Amazon would be parsing book titles as author names in the first place. I mean, I get the basic premise here (“suppose your name contained both the word ‘And’ and a comma,” and then imagine the wacky capers that could ensue). But in this case there’s no “name” that contains an “and” or a comma. There’s simply a book title that does.
So isn’t the real issue that Amazon processes book titles as author names, not that it then does funky things with those names?
Thomas: I believe in this case that the author actually was “The Fresh, Chilled and Frozen Horse and Ass Meat Research Group”, and it was this author name that got mis-parsed. The title happens to be very similar to the author’s name, which might have confused you.
Ahh, you are right: That is precisely what confused me.
Nobody taught Amazon the difference between a person and a corporate body? That’s like librarianship 101. Hilarious.