Review: Big problems
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 06 24, 2014
I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a non-reciprocal review.One of the first things I noticed about this book was the formatting. The pages all bleed into each other, so the first chapter immediately bleeds into the second chapter, etc. There's also weird spacing after a lot of stuff, as if someone hit return to space it out instead of using page breaks. It's not the first time I've read an indie book that has done this, but I never really mentioned it before. The reason I bring it up this time is because this is a book about creating kindle books, so I expect it to look good.The table of contents is a mess. There's big paragraphs in it, as well as tons of links with "(Untitled)".Right at the beginning there's some images proving that the author earns as much as the book proclaims.I was a little confused because all of the books the author has available are under $4. So, let's be generous and say he was making $2 per book sold. He'd have to sell about 7,000 books a month to make the $14,000.I noticed his books on their rankings seem to be on average somewhere around #90,000 to #100,000, which means he's selling a few copies, but based on my experience I'd expect them to rank a lot higher if he's selling that many. I don't know, it seemed off to me.It did feel repetitive and like there was a lot of unneeded information. It started off with explaining what a kindle is. The problem with that is that if someone is reading the ebook - likely on a kindle or similar device - they probably don't need to be told what it is. Likewise, if someone is reading a book about successfully publishing on the kindle, they probably don't need pages and pages about something like "Why kindles are popular".It reminded me a bit of a forensic book I once bought that decided that it was necessary to provide the reader with definitions to things like 'murderer'.Then I noticed that in the few pages I'd read it felt like I'd seen some of the same things more than once.Example:At 6%:"If you try to publish in the traditional way, then you might have to wait for months and years to get your manuscript approved and to get a good deal in publishing the book. In the world of publishing, the more you wait, the more money you lose."At 10%:"One of the biggest advantages of Kindle publishing lies in the fact that you will not have to be at the mercy of publishing houses to get your book published. This is a huge benefit as losing time is equal to losing money in the publishing world."At 91%:"The biggest advantage of Kindle publishing lies in the fact that you will not have to be at the mercy of publishing houses to get your book published. So you do not lose unnecessary time and money over such publishing efforts."That's right. I may have even missed one or two, but this is a short book and there's three examples of it repeating the exact same thing, sometimes almost word for word. It repeats A LOT.At 19% there's a big list of 'example articles' which are then repeated on the very next page.I also found it odd that at 12% there's a graph demonstrating why it's a good idea to write romance ebooks, because people prefer their romances as ebooks. Why? Because at the bottom of the list was cookbooks, where people vastly prefered those to be printed over ebook versions. And the author is saying that he sells so many ebooks, and almost all of the ebooks he has available are about cooking.When he gets to talking about cookbooks, he puts up a list of places to take recipes from. Not just the text, but the images, too. People own the rights to their work, so I can't agree with taking it. The images, as well. Someone took that image and someone owns the right to that image, you can't just take it and profit off of it. The people who create that work deserve credit and pay for their work.I can say that if I was reading a book and saw someone using images I had commissioned for my book, I would not be happy.There were also errors:"...I am going to show you publishing hot bestseller books and I have break that method...""At this point, you should have book with you."At one point it threw this out:"Don't put a bunch of PLR stuff together."But the book didn't mention PLR or what it was earlier.A lot of times the book just tells you to go somewhere else, like this:"If you want formatting tips, it's available on amazon.com."This book is FULL of lists of links that could probably easily be found online.Also, it showed more examples later on in the book of the author's success. The problem? The author blacks out all of the parts that would show what book it is. I could easily snap a screenshot of a bestseller, cover the ASIN, and pretend that I'm the #1 bestseller. I have no idea why the author would hide this information if they had books that were bestsellers.I have a lot of major problems with this book. Of course, encouraging theft and plagiarism is at the top. It's formatted poorly, has a lot of errors (poor grammar/missing commas or periods/etc) and encourages a lot of copying and pasting of other people's work. This book was published on Jun 6, 2014. It has 63 5-star reviews (Jun 24, 2014). Need I say more about that? This book pads out its few pages by repeating a lot of the same things over and over.As a matter of fact, take a look at this: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J19FBR8/ref=pdp_new_dp_reviewCompare it with this book's page: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KU7OLXA/ref=pdp_new_dp_reviewLook a little familiar? Looks like the author published essentially the same thing twice.All of this got me wondering, so I did a little more research.So here we go:From this book: "The Ninja Secret That Will Allow You To Create Bestselling Kindle Books Without Having To Lift A Finger"Look what I found over here (http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Buster-Formula-Publishers-Success-ebook/dp/B00JUAJSNQ): "The ninja tactic that will allow you to create bestselling kindle books without having to lift a finger."From this book: "He has opened doors again to his Kindle 1-on-1 Coaching Class for a very limited time for $100 per hour. Muhammad  will be raise the price to $1000 per hour once he get 5 students."Over here ( http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Money-Mastery-Publishing-Revealed-ebook/dp/B00DVWSR40 ): "It not only works for myself, but the many other people that have been through this program. People have paid me over $1800 ($300/hour) to learn this information from me through 1-on-1 coaching on my blog, ..."This book: "Take action today and buy this book so you can start making passive income online through my Kindle publishing method for a limited time discount."Other book: "If you want to learn how to make passive income online from Amazon Kindle Publishing, then you absolutely cannot miss out on downloading this book!"This book: "Simply click the "buy" button on this page and you'll easily be able to read this book from your computer, Kindle device, tablet or smart phone."Other book: "Simply click the "buy" button on this page and you'll easily be able to read Kindle Money Mastery from your computer, Kindle device, tablet or smart phone."It even offers a bonus video just like the other book.So, there's more than a little bit about this book that's suspect. I'm sorry, I couldn't rate this more than 1 star.