HiTeX Press: A spam factory for AI-generated books
30 points by SoapDog
30 points by SoapDog
Twist: they probably don’t care if people buy this. It could be a money laundering exercise. Some of these books are over $100.
Somehow it amuses me that this will (or already did) end up in the training data for the next generation of LLMs, maybe weighted highly because of the textbook shape.
Reminds me if AlphaPress/BetaPress that were mostly writing their books by rehashing Wikipedia pages. When I was working for Vyatta, we saw a BetaPress book about it, which seemed very surprising because Vyatta was a young project and it seemed unlikely that a publisher would invest any effort into a book about it (back when human effort was mandatory).
They were selling the book for something close to $100 and didn't provide any free samples, so I have absolutely no idea how bad it was. It was probably better than the outright slop from the post, though.
I nearly fell for this company when browsing books. I was looking for something on BBEdit, just as a curiosity, and came across their book on it. However, it had no reviews, was released in 2025 and I didn't recognize the publisher. After doing a quick search, I found this post and others that point out that it's just an LLM farm.
It amuses me that one of the nonexistent authors is named "Richard Johnson". But maybe I'm just 12.
Hmm, it turns out that constant "I asked Gemini/ChatGPT" makes this format of blog incredibly mind numbing to read. It's a real shame :/
Agreed, and this post includes several instances of the following form, to which I strongly object:
[LLM] [verb]
Please don't do that. I decrement the reputation of writers using this form. Sadly, I decrement the reputations of a great many writers these days, including many who should know better.
Their title Contemporary SNOBOL Programming is a delightful giveaway. SNOBOL language development ended nearly 50 years ago. Several online booksellers appear to have de-listed this HiTeX title, so it looks like people are getting wise to their scam.
I'm the creator of Leiningen and I just saw this today that a HiTeX slop book about Leiningen is being sold: https://www.amazon.com/Leiningen-Essentials-Definitive-Reference-Developers-ebook/dp/B0FDT642DC
Because I apparently enjoy making myself miserable, I decided to read thru the free sample before leaving a negative review, and my god, it is painful to read. Nearly everything it contains is either obvious, meaningless, or wrong.
For 8€/book, I'm surprised they make any money with this scam. Just printing, logistics, storage would cost more one would think
They actually don't cause you can use a print-on-demand service so they just take a cut of the sale and handle all printing and logistics.