By Herman Lai, posted Aug 19, 2011 at 9:33 AM, 2,010 views,

Fake “Steve Jobs Biography” Found in Taiwan!

Knockoff Steve Jobs's Book

Last month, a book named 《Steve Jobs Gives 11 Advices To Teenager》 was being put up as the fifth among the Top 5 bestseller in the financial book category in a Taiwanese book store “KingStone“, which recorded more than 4,000 of sales, and made over one million NT (roughly $39000 USD) of profit. The figure is reasonable if that’s really written by Steve Jobs, however it is not.

Knockoff Steve Jobs's Book

The book was launched in April this year in KingStone, translated by a person named “John Cage”. However the content of the biography did not discoursed how those 11 advice were made or under what kind of occasion, which raise questions of whether it is written by Jobs. Moreover, the genuine one is meant to reveal in November, not April.

Knockoff Steve Jobs's Book

John Cage registered address

A Taiwanese reporter tried to contact the writer, but the contact number and the registered address are incorrect. More interestingly, the Top 3 Taiwanese stores — Books, Eslite, KingStone claimed the publisher has already showed identification which proved that is authorized, therefore the book won’t eliminate for the shelve yet.

According to the head of the Consumer Protection Commission department, if it is being identified that the publisher is deceiving, then consumers have the right to demand for full refund. And, if the content of the book is a fraud, then the publisher is committing “Criminal Law”.

If you want to buy this book, you may purchase it via Taobao (here), which is selling at $52 Yuan (around $8.1). Also, you may read the index of the book on the Taobao page.

Source: AppleDaily


TAGS: Culture:China, , , , , , , , , ,
  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Paul-Chau/1359862497 Paul Chau

    Seems the “author” just collected information and speeches from the web and translated into Chinese, still a “good” book to read, haha ^^

    • Anonymous

      Paul, you are right, the book;s advice was still useful and readers benefitted from reading it…but it was an underhanded counterfeit deceit, and the publisher in Taipei will go to jail for this OR pay a hefty fine…….there are OTHER ways to go about this, but this was the wrong way, lesson learned? Prob not. it will happen again, in fact, China’s communists are probabvly rgiht not trandlating ti simpleton Chinse for China market….

  • Anonymous

    New ‘fake Steve Jobs’ surfaces — this time as Taiwan bestseller!

    SWIPE YOUR CURSOR OVER TEXT TO READ IT GHOSTWISE…The Taiwanese just can’t seem to get enough of Steve Jobs, either in person or in the doppelganger department. Readers will remember news items earlier this year about a TV ad campaign in Taiwan that used an American expat named Brook Hall to play Jobs in a very convincing ”press conference” at a Hsinchu Science Park setting. That ad campaign was a real ad campaign and completely above board.But now some disreputable punters in Taipei have drilled down a bit by publishing a bestseller in Chinese Mandarin — purported to be a ”translation” of an Amazon besteller from the USA — titled, get this, “Steve Paul Jobs’s Eleven Pieces of Advice for Young People Today.” It’s a bestseller in Taiwan.The alleged author is a chap named “John Cage”, who of course does not exist, and the publishersare keeping mum about who the actual “ghostwriter” is and even who the real publisher is. It’s Ghost Month in Taiwan now, a month-long religious ritiual in which the ghosts ofall ancestors come back to Earth to haunt the island nation and play havoc with the normal rules of daily life, so it’s fitting the a fake Jobs book has surfaced now.It’s reached Number 5 on the financial books bestseller lists here, and has reportedly taken in huge amounts of naive readers’ cash over the past few months. John Cage, as readersfamiliar with modern music will know, was the name of a very eccentric and creative New York composer, and he certainly never wrote the book on Jobs.About the only thing the fake book got right was that Jobs’ middle name is Paul.The book was purportedly translated into Chinese from its original English version, although no one can trace the original source of the book or find its U.S. counterparton Amazon. Do you see a ghost here? It’s definitely a ghost-written piece of deceit written on a ghostly dare. The police are now investigating the case, and if thepublisher is found guilty of deceiving the public, he could be in for some ghostly jail time. Stay tuned. This story has legs, as all “fake Steve Jobs” things seem to have.The alleged author of the book, “John Cage”, is alleged by the publishers to be “a graduate from Stanford University and who previously served as editor in chief at mass-circulation economic and financial magazines.” Ghostly.But nowhere in the entire book does it say when and where ”Jobs” offered his sharp-witted ”advice” for young people, as no dates or sources are cited.Enter Taiwan’s version of Sherlock Holmes. An enterprising reporter in Taipei was able to trace the street address of the publisher of the book, and when he went there he found — guess what? — a popular computer store. The store’s owner said the book was genuine and all copyright protections were in place and that the truth of the entire matter will be revealed next month, when Ghost Month is over.Meanwhile, over 25,000 copies of the faux book have been sold, and whole legion of young Jobs fans in Taiwan have read a book that he never wrote. Ghostly.

  • Anonymous

    Fake Steve Jobs tells kids: ‘Do what you want to do

    The Chinese have been counterfeiting iPhones, iPads and even Apple stores for years, but now an enterprising Taipei publisher has gone one further and attempted to make a quick dollar in China and Taiwan by leeching off the greatest Apple asset of all: Steve Jobs.Ecorebooks has put out the made-up looking 25 lessons that Steve Jobs taught the young, a book boasting a blurb from “Barack Obama” on the back cover, according to Reuters.
    The publication of the new book in China and Taiwan comes weeks after a previous book, Steve Paul Jobs’ Eleven Pieces of Advice for Young People Today – also from Ecorebooks – was pulled from Chinese and Taiwanese bookshops for being a fake.Eleven pieces of advice claimed to be a Chinese translation of “an Amazon bestseller” written by John Cage, supposedly the former editor of a financial magazine. It turns out the English version never existed, but it took bookshops a while to ditch the fake. Yes, apparently there is a law against fake books in Taiwan.According to the Reuters’ report, the faux book contained anecdotes about Chinese historical figures, and aphorisms such as “listen to the voice inside your heart, do what you want to do”.While that could be passed off as a general lesson to draw from the life of Jobs, most of the book lacked any specific references to things Steve said or did. Chinese blog MicGadget said that the content of the biography never discussed when or in what circumstances Jobs issued the 11 pearls of wisdom.

  • Anonymous

    new fake jobs book in Taiwan and CHina, see Reuters report below or google title — 25 lessons that steve jobs taught the young…..once again from ecorebooks.pixnet.net

  • Anonymous

    SAY IT IN 17 WORDS: New Fake Steve Jobs Book By The Chinese …

    plogspot101.blogspot.com/ - Translate this page3 days ago by danNew Fake Steve Jobs Book By The Chinese Writer Formerly Known as ‘John Cage’ Gets New Title, New Edition and New Pen Name in Taiwan A Chinese writer in mainland China using the unlikely and laughable pen name …More results from SAY IT IN 17 WORDS