IN fewer than 200 days since Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 disappeared, a total of 126 books have been published or are shortly to be released, The Independent Publishing Magazine (TIPM) said.
TIPM editor and researcher Mick Rooney said while it usually takes nine to 18 months to pen and publish a book, most of the MH370 books were self-published in print and e-books (electronic books) as early as 11 days after the plane disappeared on March 8.
He said cases of disasters and tragedies usually result in intensive, near 24-hour media coverage for a period of time, followed by television documentaries, films and books on the subject.
“If the documented story of MH370 is to be a film or book, then it is truly an extraordinary mystery to recount in any medium. We have no plot, no central character, no bodies, no concrete motives or answers, and we are not even sure of the location of our mystery,” Rooney wrote in “MH370: When to Publish? — A simple case study”, dated Aug 26.
However, he said, this did not stop Indian director Rupesh Paul from announcing the making of a film loosely based on MH370, titled The Vanishing Act.
Rooney said while the media were buzzing around Paul’s film, John Blake Publishing in London was publishing Nigel Cawthorne’s 246-page book entitled Flight MH370: The Mystery, which claimed that the aircraft was shot down accidentally during joint United States-Thai military exercises.
Rooney said in May, Big Five Publishers’ Penguin Random House acquired the rights to Christine Negroni's Crashed: What the world’s most mysterious airplane disasters teach us about design, technology and human performance.
Unlike Cawthorne, he said, Negroni had worked as a private aviation investigator and journalist. She was invited by the United States Federal Aviation Administration to sit as an independent voice on improved safety rules for aging aircraft.
Rooney, who is also TIPM Media publishing consultant, said another book, Goodnight Malaysian 370, was published by Wilson Aviation last month and garnered 10 reviews on Amazon to date, eight of which were five-star reviews.
The book suggested that MH370 passengers might have died from lack of oxygen hours before the pilot allegedly performed a controlled ditching and crashed the plane in the Indian Ocean.
Rooney said John Washington's “Malaysian Flight 370 Report: An international search for 239 passengers”, was the first “book”, self-published through CreateSpace (online platform) on March 19, and then began an avalanche of similar books.
“Washington's book is just 50 pages long, and another by Dimitrinka Iv. Staikova (“Clairvoyant/Psychic Predictions about the missing Malaysia airplane flight MH370: Psychic Predictions missing flight MH370+Psychic News 2013”), comes in at just 42 pages, again, via CreateSpace. It’s priced at US$7.20 (RM23.28).”
He added that among the books published on another self-published online site, Kindle were: “The Mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370” (April 25), “MH370: A Novella” (May 31), and “MH370: By Accident or Design” (June 3).
Rooney described several of the books that were written by aviation experts as of “gems” quality. However, he said many more were “mere regurgitation” of what had been reported in the media.
“An overwhelming majority (of the 126 books)… are utter dross, a combination of books based almost entirely on material cobbled together from the online news sources (paste and copy which clearly violates copyright), and some books simply using MH370 as a vehicle to disseminate political and conspiracy theory rants.”