I realize it’s been a few days, and for that I am truly sorry, but PLEASE know that while I may have been absent I have not been wasting time.
No sirree, I have been doing some research that HOPEFULLY will save MANY of you HUNDREDS of dollars in training and a LOT of time and frustration. One of the first things that they teach in Entrepreneur School, OK quit laughing, I know there is no such thing, why do you think I had to go out and write the BOOK on the subject!
But I digress, one thing that you will here everyone who talks, teaches or even discusses anything business related tell you is that you really want to do your homework and make sure that there is some kind of audience out there in the world for your product, before you start to create it. Now I know, we are AUTHORS, we create we are Artists, yeah so, we STILL want someone to read our creations right? So as you have seen me refer in the past, you want to at the very least, place your subject into a search engine and see what comes up!
After all you may be very passionate about the idea of domesticating barn owls for common and all natural pest control, but if you’re the only one, I don’t want you to be heart broken if you’re the only one who wants to read about it. So, before I started developing this course I did a search around the net for similar ideas to see if this was a market or just something I wanted to develop for personal use. WOW there is a lot of folks out there who are looking for writing education.
One thing that kept coming up over and over was a gentleman (who shall remain nameless – you’ll see why in a minute) who publishes a course “Write any book in 14 days.” Well obviously this was very intriguing, because after writing 6 books this year personally, and helping several others do the same, I know that 21 days is a very comfortable rate that even the BUSIEST person seems to be able to achieve. So when I saw 14 days I became very interested.
First let me say that this gentleman seems to have sold a great many of his courses, so in order to perform my due diligence, as well as to help address some obvious comparisons I made sure to perform some research and obtain a set of his materials.
Now someone suggested that the reason I won’t mention his name is fear of competition, and actually that’s far from the truth. In reality I haven’t mentioned his name or website for a very good reason, I don’t want to appear to be either endorsing or detracting from this particular author. You see, when I did all my follow up I found a great many holes in his web site and information trail, apparently he has an audio clip that explains how great his course is, but when you clip on it there is a stern message from someone saying that “playback has been disabled and someone should contact a vendor.” Well as far as I’m concerned that’s kind of like me telling you about this great auto mechanic, and giving you his phone number, only to have you call and find its been disconnected. It’s not MY fault someone didn’t pay their phone bill, yet now I look like the shmoe.
But I digress (happens a lot doesn’t it?), the real reason for me even bringing this up is that during my classes I have always pointed out that in some of the training materials available on the internet someone will inevitably advertise “I can show you how to write an entire 250 page book and never open a word processor!” Then you examine the training material only to find that he wants to post an ad on Elance.com and hire a ghost writer for somewhere between $1,600 and $2,000, and publish it under your own name. Now I jokingly explain that I don’t really consider that as a book that I wrote, but if that’s what YOU want to do knock yourself out. Aside from the fact that I’m not promoting spending anywhere NEAR that much to get your entire book published, much less written.
Well, this particular Internet guru does mention that as well as a derivative of that (which I REFUSE to explain) as a way to write a book, he then goes on for quite some time explaining how to make sure your book is a best seller every time!
Now I would love to have a best seller on some greatly known list of so rated publications, but something about his method just doesn’t seem right. Ready? Here it is:
1) Go to a used bookstore or your library and buy/rent 5 to 10 books written within the last 10 years, but at
least 3 years old, that ALL have “Best Seller” or “New York Times Best Seller” on the front cover.
2) Then skim or read through each of these books and look for 4 or 5 common factors that appear in each.
- This gentleman espouses that you will indeed find at least 4 or 5 commonalities regardless of whether these are fiction or non-fiction books.
- I couldn’t imagine trying this in fiction, but I can see where he is headed in Non fiction.
3) Make sure you absolutely understand the central themes that are being espoused in each of these commonalities.
4) Make sure that you have at least one chapter in your book that covers each one of these commonalities.
Now, even though I can’t see you everyone who knows how to spell the word plagiarism please raise your hand. If you’re not familiar enough with that one lets try “law suit.”
I’m not a lawyer, I don’t even play one on the Internet, but I can smell a bad idea from a LONG way off.
The sad part is that this guy has a few solid ideas in his teachings/
This just is NOT one of them.
In my opinion.
UNTIL THEN:
Facebook/writeyourbookin21days
Or
On twitter @BOOKIN21DAYS…