Writing one book is hard enough, but can you imagine anyone finishing 200,000 titles? Philip M. Parker, a professor at the Insead Business School in France, has more that 200,000 titles credited to his name and his publishing company, making him the most published author ever.

The only catch is, Professor Parker doesn’t actually write any of his books; he has designed a series of complicated computer programs which search online and compile vast quantities of raw information available in the public domain, and turn this information into books. Technically, Parker is a “compiler,” not an author, but the end result is the same.

A quick search of Amazon.com will reveal that Parker’s publishing company, Icon, has the most titles available in the online bookstore. Obviously, these books do not deal in fiction, and most are simply informational “guides” on a particular subject. And to bring down the cost of publishing so many titles, Parker uses print on demand, so that a book is only printed once a customer purchases it online.

The most profitable books published by Parker’s Icon company sell hundreds of copies, but others sell only a few or even a single copy. Even so, these books can still be profitable, as the print on-demand publishing method eliminates distribution and storage expense.

Many of his titles are volumes of information relating to medical disorders, or the practice of medicine in general, and are quickly snapped up by medical libraries. Parker concedes that many of his books are highly specialized, and are of limited interest at best. But what his publishing company lacks in public interest, they more than make up for in quantity. By publishing 200,000 books, a company can easily be profitable without any particular title becoming a bestseller.

When writing a book the “old-fashioned way” (actually typing or writing it), an author may need a year or more to research and complete a 200 page work. Parker’s multitasking computer programs, however, can “compile” a new book from information already available in the public domain in about 13 seconds. And this is exactly how Parker’s company has been able to publish 200,000 titles in just a few years — it’s all about the computer algorithms.

While traditional authors may scoff at this method of publishing, there is no denying that it is profitable, and it takes the vast majority of the research and writing work out of the hands of humans. As artificial intelligence programs continue to improve, we are likely to see more publishers using this compiling method to publish information.

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