The giveaway is at the end of the post!

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Kindle Bestseller Publishing: The Proven 4-Week Formula to go from Zero to Bestseller as a First-Time Author!

You guys, this book has probably the longest title eeever. I got this book for free during a promo on Amazon.

The Book That Reads Like an MLM Marketing Guide

The content in this book was pretty good and mostly accurate, but the author has some very annoying ways of writing. She is constantly doing little smiley faces with statements. Like this:

Add a few nice pictures and an engaging bio. The bio will also show on your book page, so start with the benefits you bring to your readers, not just your accomplishments (though those are important, too… 🙂

– Gundi Gabrielle

I think her intent with this is to make the content feel more relaxed and accessible. Maybe it’s a signature. But most of the time, it comes off as smug. I am also not a huge fan of ONLY TYPING IN ALL CAPS WHEN YOU WANT TO EMPHASIZE SOMETHING. I probably should have expected more of that because of the description of the book being in ALL CAPS but it is still a little jarring when someone is yelling at you all the time!

This Book Feels Like a Thin Veil for Affiliate Links

I have nothing against affiliate links. I use them in my own content all the time. I’m using one in the link to the book up above. But there were times when it felt like it was material that we had already covered more than once and it was just another place to tell us to go buy this service or product.

I understand that she was pushing Publisher Rocket big time for the categories and that whole section was interesting to me. I had not heard of the extra categories that you can request to be added to. So, that part was helpful.

I guess what bothered me about the affiliate situation is this: she claims that you can become a bestseller even if you know nothing about writing. Just follow her 4-week guide and that’s it!

What she is saying is that being a bestseller on Amazon means almost nothing. She suggests finding a category where the competition is so low that you can make 3 sales and become a “bestseller” and then you can use that to keep selling! Maybe it does work that way, particularly with nonfiction, but it also means that your book isn’t truly selling the best. It’s selling the best in a subcategory within a subcategory that no one knows existed…

What she is selling is that you can pick any topic, do a couple of hours of research, write the book in a week, and become a bestseller easily and for just $500.

Is any of that true? Yes, you can write a non-fiction book about anything that you can gather enough research on. And yes, you can write a short 12-15k book in a week. And you can be the top in a sub-sub-sub-category and slap #1 bestseller on your book. However, you can’t make a career out of being a writer if you know nothing about writing. You can’t write a one-off book and throw money at it and assume it will be successful.

If we could, we all would. Why write for hundreds of hours and practice your craft when all you need is $500 to throw at it?

She does mention that you should buy ads for your books, but that’s not really a main selling point in this book. I wish it had been covered more, but she probably has another book that she put out for that.

I’m not convinced that selling 3 books in a sub-sub-sub category will make anyone rich, even if it makes them a bestseller (technically).

I am probably coming off as a little salty here because I just didn’t like the feeling that she was trying to sell me something for the whole book. She was constantly using examples of her students that had used the method to rank high. And that’s wonderful, but it was sometimes peppered in so randomly that it was jarring. I wasn’t convinced that this method of becoming a bestseller in a low-competition category would work very well for fiction. Maybe if I had an extra $100 to throw at Publisher Rocket then I would feel differently.

However, it is an informative book and I highlighted a few sections that had new information that I want to look into more deeply to use in my own career. I feel like she does a good job of presenting the information for most of it. I did enjoy her positive attitude and it’s always nice to see someone have that “you can do it too!” perspective.

So, I will give her the pass on her paragraph of a title and bizarre punctuation ….. 🙂 As long as we are all in the understanding that “bestseller” does not mean “sells well.”

This book will most likely be helpful if you are writing a non-fiction book to market and you are interested in using a book as social proof for another business.

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Speaking of Selling Books, The Leslie Kim Serials Omnibus is coming out on the 31st! I am thrilled to see my serials in print for the first time. If you like science fiction, vampires, private investigators, and dystopian fiction, you will love this book.

It’s Supernatural meets Firefly. If you would like to buy it, this is the link!

I would love to get a review from you!

Want to get a free eBook copy?

And if you like to get free stuff, I am going to be giving away copies of The Leslie Kim Serials Omnibus eBook to my newsletter when it launches. If you are interested in being on my list, you can sign up right here.