Improbable research

Speed writing

Take a leaf out of Philip M Parker's book

Philip M Parker is the world's fastest book author, and given that he has been at it only for about five years and already has more than 85,000 books to his name, he is also probably the most prolific.

Parker is also the most wide-ranging of authors - the phrase "shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings" is not the half a per cent of it. Nor are the classic subjects foreign to him.

He has authored 188 books related to shoes, 10 about ships, 219 about wax, six about sour red cabbage pickles, and six about royal jelly supplements.

To begin somewhere, let's note that Parker is the author of The 2007-2012 Outlook for Bathroom Toilet Brushes and Holders in the United States, which is 677 pages long, sells for £250, and is described by the publisher as a "study [that] covers the latent demand outlook for bathroom toilet brushes and holders across the states and cities of the United States".

Philip M Parker titles include the following:

· The 2007-2012 World Outlook for Rotary Pumps with Designed Pressure of 100 psi or Less and Designed Capacity of 10 gpm or Less.

· Avocados: A Medical Dictionary, Bibliography, and Annotated Research Guide

· Webster's English to Romanian Crossword Puzzles: Level 2

· The 2007-2012 Outlook for Golf Bags in India

· The 2007-2012 Outlook for Chinese Prawn Crackers in Japan

· The 2002 Official Patient's Sourcebook on Cataract Surgery

· The 2007 Report on Wood Toilet Seats: World Market Segmentation by City

· The 2007-2012 Outlook for Frozen Asparagus in India

Parker is the Eli Lilly chaired professor of innovation, business and society at Insead, the international business school based in Fontainebleau, France. He is no dilettante.

When he turns to a new subject, he seizes and shakes it till several books, or several hundred, emerge. About the outlook for toilet brushes and holder, Parker has authored at least six books. There is his The 2007-2012 Outlook for Bathroom Toilet Brushes and Holders in Japan, and also The 2007-2012 Outlook for Bathroom Toilet Brushes and Holders in Greater China, and also The 2007-2012 Outlook for Bathroom Toilet Brushes and Holders in India, and also The 2007 Report on Bathroom Toilet Brushes and Holders: World Market Segmentation by City.

Amazon.com offers (on the day I am writing this) 85,761 books authored by Philip M Parker. Parker himself says the total is well over 200,000.

How is this all possible? How does one man do so much?

Parker created the secret to his own success: he invented a machine that writes books. He says it takes about 20 minutes to write one. Next week, in these pages, we will glance at the machine, and at another few Parker-penned creations.

(Thanks to Peter Carboni for bringing the first toilet brush outlook book to my attention, and to Chris McManus for alerting me to the several hundred medical books.)

· Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel Prize

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