Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/How to Be Rich, Nigga

This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was no consensus; kept. Flcelloguy | A note? | Desk 17:36, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] How to Be Rich, Nigga

Nothing on Google, and I find it hard to belive a businessman would actually name his book this.Shanel 00:34, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

• My Bad, it is an actual book, but it has two reviews on Amazon. Still, this makes it non-notable. So Delete--Shanel 00:38, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

• "Spinks, Gerard" has over 11,000 Google hits; while not all of them are him, many of them seem to be. The book is easily verifiable by various booksellers, and the author has a significant following, particularly in minority commnities. If someone is willing to create Gerard Spinks, then I say merge. Otherwise, keep: this book is significant. - Che Nuevara, the Democratic Revolutionary 01:06, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

• Delete - "Amazon.com Sales Rank: #608,099." Should we have 600,000 more widely selling books on Wikipedia too? --Quasipalm 01:28, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete Not notable enough for listing. (~500 Google hits, low Amazon sales rankings) Johntex 01:42, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete non notable -- GregAsche 02:02, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
• Delete; non-notable. Jaxl | talk 02:20, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete per Quasi. Sdedeo 02:29, 30 August 2005 (UTC) Keep/merge per Che; googling around shows this guy to be a more notable (if self-promoting) figure than his poor book sales indicate. Sdedeo 02:42, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep or merge. Since when is that a metric, Quasi? We should throw out notable books because they sold poorly with the public recently? Will this be, to paraphrase Network, "the first known case of a book being removed from history for having low sales ratings?" Many notable books may not sell like hotcakes to the public in 2005. I spent about 2 minutes trying to think off the top of my head something that might be a good example (obviously dependent on what the top of my head looks like), and so far I've at least come up with "The Philosophical Writings of Descartes: Volume 1" and "Black Beauty" which are both in the 200ks, as well as Mrs. Lirriper by Charles Dickens which, by your metric, is HALF as important as the subject of this VfD since it weighs in at 1200k on the Amazon Cashometre. I understand the temptation to use arbitrary rankings, especially in these times of high information availability, rather than looking at the specific circumstances in each case, is very strong. But a lot of temptations are strong, so what? D. G. 03:45, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
  • It's a metric in this sense because it can be used to measure something. I found an edition of Black Beauty at about 25K; the fact that they have multiple editions should ring bells, as well as the fact they're still in print after a century. Instead of pointing at Black Beauty and asking why it has a page, why not point out why this is notable? --Prosfilaes 08:23, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
    • And, we don't have a page on Mrs. Lirriper, so if it were valid to judge a book by sales on one edition a century after it was first published, that still wouldn't help your case.--Prosfilaes 05:46, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Please note, that when I voted on this article, it said: "It has achieved unexpected success, eventually being accepted for sale on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble's bookstores in the United States." So, I was voting based on its own claim of being note-worthy and found it lacking. I still say delete. --Quasipalm 14:54, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. The book's no Harry Potter, but it's also not something that's sold 10 copies out of some guy's basement (which would be more in line with my definition of not notable). The author is apparently somewhat well known, the book was featured on Comedy Central's "Tough Crowd", and it's being sold through amazon and other retailers....keep. Wandering oojah 04:31, 30 August 2005 (UTC)*
• Keep for now, as per DG. Andre (talk) 06:18, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep as per DG, nigga. —RaD Man (talk) 08:00, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, its publisher, Instantpublisher.com, is a self-publishing program, not even a publishing house. Radman, you'll have to explain why we should have articles on the top 600,000 books on amazon. Zoe 08:07, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
  • I don't have to do anything, Beau. Being featured on Comedy Central's Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn and several other arguments made by DG and Wandering oojah sealed the deal. —RaD Man (talk) 08:12, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm biased with regard to POD/self-publishing, but I don't think a book being self-published should be used as a reason to delete it. It's sales, readers and the author and subject matter that are important. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:06, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, or merge to author if possible. Do we want pages on the top 20,000 books on Amazon? Expanded through history, there's millions of books we could have pages on that are more notable than this one. Usually, we put book information on the author page, unless the book itself is very notable, or the author and book are notable enough to have seperate pages, so put it on the author's page. (Especially since the press releases kept talking about the series of books.)--Prosfilaes 08:23, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete as per nominator.--nixie 11:00, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete - if the author doesn't even warrant a page, why should his really low-selling, self-published book? Selling fifty copies of a book would get it in the top 500,000 on Amazon - a rank of 608,099 means about thirty copies sold. Utterly nn. Proto t c 11:51, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Briangotts (talk) 18:48, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete I'm generally in favour of keeping pretty much any book, but that doesn't include self-published, print-on-demand, vanity-press, etc. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 19:06, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
• Delete - we don't need an article on everything ever published --Outlander 21:01, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep -- needs expansion and verification, but the article is not just about the book but about its success. Self-publication cannot possibly be grounds for deletion if the book, or its status among its readership, is of genuine interest. -- Chick Bowen 22:41, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
  • The problem there is that its supposed success is entirely self-proclaimed and thus unverifiable. Certainly, no real success is reflected in its Amazon rank if it sold just 30 copies (as estimated above). Most people, if they "published" a book, could sell more than 30 copies just among their immediate friends and family. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 23:00, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
  • I am attempting to verify the book's success; I'll report if I find out anything.Chick Bowen 00:12, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete the page on this book on Amazon does not inspire confidence in its notability. Unless its supposed success can be verified... --Etacar11 01:41, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Unverifiable success and notability. --Calton | Talk 02:16, August 31, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Can you think of a more notable business insprational book so strongly targetted to young African-Americans? Genre and social context makes this one notable; I wouldn't be very interested in keeping a generic pulp novel at the same rank. There is more to say about this book, and it seems to say something about the world it lives in. Samaritan 08:10, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep per DG and Samaritan. -- ElBenevolente 15:16, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
• Comment Amazon sales ranks uses the total sales ever of a book when calculating its rank if below 100,000; not just the sales in the last year (10,000 - 100,000), month (1,000 - 10,000) or week (1 - 1,000). A rank of 600,000 would indicate sales of a grand total of between fifty and eighty copies sold, ever. Proto t c 15:36, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, nigga. -HX 17:11, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete - Not a work of importance -- Joshua Johaneman 19:28, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
• keep this too please it seems notable to me Yuckfoo 01:30, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.