Illustrated book about cats written by Amazon Mechanical Turk
Bjoern sez, "'Amazing but True Cat Stories' is a collection of stories about feline antics, illustrated in vivid 8-bit color by true mspaint artists. Stolen pants, pooped-on veterinarians, fur on fire, foretold seizures, and much more! This book was entirely written by the anonymous crowd. All stories and illustrations were submitted by workers on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. I selected, edited and laid out the stories in a short but sweet coffee table book.
The idea for this book was born in Terminal A at Washington Dulles, where I was stranded for some hours in late July. To spend my time, I posted the following two tasks on MTurk: 1) Write at least one paragraph about a funny, unbelievable or otherwise memorable incident involving your cat. 2) Sketch a cat. With or without an environment and toys.
Before I got out of that terminal, it was already clear that the submissions were too good to keep to myself."
Amazing but True Cat Stories (Thanks, Bjoern!)
When we first received our cat, my father brought her home in his car. She was only a kitten and was running around his car like crazy. To keep her from getting lost he put her into the glove compartment. After about fifteen minutes he began to hear meowing from behind the dashboard. He reopened the glove compartment to find the cat had chewed through the plastic. He later had to remove the radio in order to get her out. The look on his face was priceless after the event. This was an omen of times to come with our new kitten.
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Why would you put a kitten in a glove compartment D:
God, I could write one of those about my current little psycho all by myself.
Ironic that although the book was created by users of Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk, the book is not available for sale from Amazon.com...
So I'm assuming that this fellow paid a nominal fee to his Turks, something in the low single digits of dollars. And I'm sure that the MT license or his specific listing made clear that he owned their work-product forevah and evah, so there's no legal hassle to be had with royalties and such. He appears to have used about 40 people's work, selected from a pool of who-knows-how-many.
And now it's going for $15/$25 on Blurb, so even if only a few people buy it, he'll easily turn a profit with his share of that price.
All very clever and laudable when it's one person doing it, and I'm not worried about the pixel-stained masses being oppressed by the Turkish capitalist intelligentsia, but somehow this model makes me nervous. I really don't know why. Anyone else feel like this portends something weird?
Interesting idea Cory.
A plug:
After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans I donated some money in the name of my cats Sparky and Olivia to Noah’s Wish.
I got an E-mail from them today detailing a fund raiser in the form of a Pet Photo Contest. Basically, send in a photo of your pet, donate $10 per photo as an "entry fee", and then vote for pictures at $1.00 each. Winner gets a professionally painted Pet Portrait, and they make and sell note cards with all winners photographs.
I think we can all remember the poor performance of the government response to human needs during this natural disaster, but pets were especially hard hit.
Noah's Wish is a unique animal welfare organization dedicated exclusively to rescuing and sheltering animals in disasters, throughout the United States and Canada.
Bless their hearts.
Thanks
Oh! How warm and fuzzy it would be if people came together as Amazon Mechanical Turks because they wanted to practically give away their collaborative efforts in hopes of creating a book that they would all share stock in instead of being so economically disadvantaged that turking was the only viable option and giving away their efforts for pennies so that others could profit on them was just a cold reality of the job.
While im all a fan of 'anyone can make art', these pictures are rubbish.
I find this fascinating! I badly want to get in on the mischief and find out how a small selection of random "Turkers" feel about this book, by paying them to comment here. But sadly it seems you have to be based in the US to become a "Requester" :-(
I am a Mechanical Turk worker and was paid to post my opinion on this topic.
Great to see my kitty used twice in the book! Nice to be "published", do I get a cut of the proceedings? LOL!
I am a Mechanical Turk worker and was paid to post my opinion on this topic.
Great to see my kitty used twice in the book! Nice to be "published", do I get a cut of the proceedings? LOL!
I am a Mechanical Turk worker and was paid to post my opinion on this topic. I really like the fact that this is a collabration of Turkers! It's a cute story and The artic drawings are appropiate.
I am a Mechanical Turk worker and was paid to post my opinion on this topic.
Interesting book, interesting idea. I was wondering how this Turk thing all works, and this is a good example.
I am a Mechanical Turk worker and was paid to post my opinion on this topic.
This is a great idea. There is a different book out written by a collaboration of emails that the authors received. I don't think any of those people got paid. So I think it's great that the Turks got paid a little something for their ideas.
I am a Mechanical Turk worker and was paid for my opinion on this topic. I think it is wonderful to combine the gifted work of many to make a book that can be enjoyed by many more people. I would like to see more projects like this come to fruition.
I am a Mechanical Turk worker and was paid to post my opinion on this topic."
This is a fun idea. Who among us doesn't have numerous funny stories about a wealth of different subjects. I'll look forward to other interesting subjects turned into a book.
I am a Mechanical Turk worker and was paid to post my opinion on this topic.
I'm an avid fan of collaborative art journals, ATC trades, and altered books. So a project such as this is such a delight to see. I love to see the artistic perceptions of many and I really look forward to more artistic collaborations like this. Thanks for putting this together!
I am a Mechanical Turk worker and was paid to post my opinion on this topic.
This is such a great and innovative idea, as I have never heard of it before. This idea could bring a whole new genre into books. This idea could be used for so much more as well.
What's great is mechanical turk workers get paid for their time and effort even if it's just a little bit, instead of just doing it for nothing. In other words, it gives them motivation to respond. This enables you to take out the absolute best stories.
Fascinating to read all of those opinions - thanks guys! - and it does seem to address some of the concerns of earlier posters.
I'm also really thrilled that someone not only liked my idea of buying some opinions in this fashion, but made it their own and shelled out to see it happen. Thank you!