Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Selling to Zebras

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Vanamonde (Talk) 19:52, 24 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Selling to Zebras[edit]

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Article about a non-fiction book, not properly referenced as passing our inclusion criteria for books. The main notability claim here is that it won a "best book" award from a publication whose name exists on Wikipedia only as a redirect to our article about vanity awards rather than a standalone article establishing its notability as a publication -- so a book clearly can't be "inherently" notable for winning an award that is not itself notable at all. But the referencing here is entirely primary sourcing (the self-published press releases of the vanity award, Q&A interviews in which the author is answering questions about his own work in the first person in unreliable sources, and the book circularly metareferencing itself), with absolutely no evidence of reliable or WP:GNG-worthy coverage about the book shown at all.
For added bonus, there are conflict of interest issues here as well, as the book's author has tried at least twice in the past two-years to rewrite the article as a hyperadvertorialized profile of his Zebra-branded software company, and the article was created in the first place by an editor named "Zebrabrent".
Nothing here is "inherently" notable enough to exempt this book from having to have much, much better referencing than this. Bearcat (talk) 15:06, 17 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Literature and United States of America. Bearcat (talk) 15:06, 17 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment it's been used a in scholarly context [1], I can't find any critical reviews. Oaktree b (talk) 15:45, 17 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete This is purely PROMO. The publisher claims to not be a vanity press but calls itself a "hybrid" - in essence it's a vanity press that works harder than many others. The article has been edited by the author and by at least one other SPA. The book that quotes this book is from Soundview Executive Book Summaries, which is a kind of Reader's Digest for business books. I do see the book listed in some academic libraries, but that does not make it notable. I don't find any good sources that would support notability. Lamona (talk) 20:27, 21 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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 a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.