Slicing the Hype: A Simple Formula for Finding Great Nonfiction e-Books

92 Pages·2015·0.97 MB·English

by  Stawicki

Slicing the Hype
A Simple Formula for Finding Great Nonfiction e-
Books
Written and Published By: Michal Stawicki
michalzone.com
Kindle Format by Archangel Ink
Copyright © 2015 Michal Stawicki
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Navigating the Trashy Ocean Chapter 2: Buying My First Book on
Amazon
Chapter 3: The Sinister Five
Chapter 4: The Kindle Gold Rush
Chapter 5: Gold Rushers
Chapter 6: Winning the War
Chapter 7: Indies
Chapter 8: H2H
Chapter 9: Being Genuine
Chapter 10: Implementation
Chapter 11: Free
Chapter 12: Discerning Kindle Gold Rushers
Chapter 13: Finding Indies
Chapter 14: Avoiding Sundews
Bonus Chapter: Six Ways to Unveil a Hoax Author
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About the Author
Chapter 1: Navigating the Trashy Ocean
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Slicing the Hype is a quick “how-to.” It will help you find the best titles and
authors on Amazon within minutes, not hours.
Maybe you’ve become annoyed by the multitude of pseudobooks flooding
Amazon recently. These are usually poorly written, offering only regurgitated
and useless information, yet often have nice covers designed to fool you.
In this book, I reveal who’s worth reading on Amazon and how to quickly
discern them. As an avid reader, author, and book event organizer, I will provide
behind-the-scenes insight into the Kindle market, which will make choosing
your reading easier.
I remember buying my first book on Amazon like it was yesterday. It was at the
beginning of May 2013, and I was finishing writing my first book. I was looking
for a book about Kindle publishing. The first word that comes to my mind to
describe this experience is “confusing.” You’ll find more of this story in the next
chapter.
I still shudder at the thought of the grueling process I had to go through to find
that perfect book. It repeats on a smaller scale every time I look for a book in a
new niche. If I’m familiar with the topic in advance, it’s not so hard. But when
I’m trying to target a book on a subject I don’t know much about, the nightmare
comes back. Irrelevant search results, plastic reviews, hyped book descriptions,
reviews written by frustrated trolls … a headache is guaranteed.
Unfortunately, it’s a process that must be gone through in order to distinguish
trash from valuable books, because there are a lot of trashy books on Amazon.
It’s not only talented, honest, and transparent folks who are making use of the
digital revolution. Huge numbers are trying to utilize the amazing potential of
Amazon’s customer base to get rich quick. In the Kindle marketplace, there is
even a name for the phenomenon: The Kindle Gold Rush.
There are some (mostly traditional publishers) who blame independent authors
(indies) for the mess the e-book market has become and highlight indie
publishing’s consistently low quality. There is some merit in this criticism, but
low quality is not a real problem for readers. Anyone who buys—or downloads
free—a book full of spelling or grammar errors will just put it away and
probably leave a negative review advising the author to proofread his work.
Amazon allows the return of Kindle books during the seven days following
purchase. Low quality is very easy to target and punish, and it doesn’t take you
much time or energy to do either.
When I was looking for that first book on Kindle publishing, I didn’t have a
problem with low quality books. I had a problem with a multitude of titles that
promised to solve my problem but didn’t deliver. Kindle publishing is the latest
“big thing” on the Internet. Every opportunity seeker seems determined to
saturate the market with their work and make a fortune.
Those authors aren’t thinking of their readers’ interests.
Categories of Publishers
Today on Kindle, we don’t just have traditional publishers and indie authors.
There are also bloggers. Some try to turn book readers into blog visitors; others
want to monetize their blog content.
There are hobbyists who want to put their works in front of readers for the fun of
it. They have no interest in the business side of things or market needs.
There are Kindle Gold Rushers—publishers who look for hot trends, outsource
the content production, do basic proofreading, and then spam the charts with
dozens or even hundreds of almost-books.
There are online marketers whose publications are not much more than
advertising fliers for their services.
There are entrepreneurs or celebrities who publish a single book as a badge of
authority; “best-selling author” is the latest trendy label to wear.
There are indie beginners who haven’t yet learned what to do and/or are
listening to the wrong advice.
Most of these works aren’t really books as we traditionally understand them. The
torrent of choice causes enormous confusion when it comes to choosing a book
from this vast Wild West marketplace.
You can’t count on Amazon to change their operating pattern and only allow
“good” books. Whether it is a Gold Rusher’s book, a collection of blog articles
by a mediocre blogger, a traditionally published book, or a flier or promotional
piece penned by an online marketer, all deliver earnings to Amazon if you
purchase. And Amazon uses an old and worn-out argument that the invisible
hand of “the market” will deal with any unfair advantage that some may have.
I am skeptical. Months and years are passing, but the invisible hand has done
nothing. The number of books-that-are-not-books on Kindle increases.
So, you are on your own. It’s possible to tell genuine books apart from the rest,
but it takes diligent research, as I have had to do. This has a price in time and
energy. You certainly should not pay for poor content when, in the same store,
sitting next to the trash you’ve just purchased, is a perfect book on the subject at
the same price.
Are all non-indie and non-traditionally-published books trashy? Not necessarily.
Some of them are, but they are usually the lowest quality books—annoying but
not threatening. The bigger problem is posed by products that are passable.
These deter you from consuming the best books. They are like junk food. They
look tasty. And they are tasty, some of the time, but they provide little in terms
of “nutritional value.” The information in them is basically worthless.
Amazon leaves you on your own, so you need a solution for this unpleasant
situation. You need to get educated about what’s going on and how to discern
real books from hoax authors’ poor imitations. And so … this book provides a
simple system to help you tell if a particular title is worth your time and money.
Understand this system—and use it—and you will get to know different
categories of content producers on Kindle and you will know how to quickly
judge which of those producers are worthy of your attention.
Chapter 2: Buying My First Book on Amazon
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I started by typing a keyword phrase—“sell books on Amazon”—in the search
bar and browsing the results. As much as Amazon tries to make the search
throughout millions of its products easy and fun, I didn’t find it so. Hundreds of
results were presented to me, and I started painstakingly browsing through them.
Fortunately, I knew a bit about the Amazon ranking system. I ignored all e-
books that had a bestseller rank greater than 200,000. People who wanted to
teach me how to succeed on Kindle had better be able to sell their own books!
However, the Amazon search engine doesn’t think, and it certainly doesn’t feel.
When I typed, “How to sell more books on Amazon,” I was bombarded with a
multitude of get-rich-quick-scheme titles. Heck! Search engines still don’t
predict very well what we have in mind while looking for a specific topic. Many
of the results were books with titles and descriptions stuffed with keywords that
the authors put there to try to hook me. Those authors were competent at gaming
the search engine. The quality of their books was a totally different story.
Amazon’s search engine is second only to Google’s. The data management giant
knows very well that their engine is just a machine and therefore has the
constraints of a machine. And recently, their algorithm was changed so it tracks
the trends in social networks. Pages with more shares and social buzz now rank
higher.
Amazon has its own human factor: reviews. The number of reviews does affect
the search result order, but, unfortunately, reviews are often also gamed. One of
the first books I noticed was written by a “guru” who admitted that he was
buying reviews. Truth to tell, the reviews just added to my confusion. The same
book was described by some as “groundbreaking” or “amazing” and by others as
“lame” or “full of typos.” The worst curse was the plastic reviews. You surely
know the kind: “This book was fantastic!!!! I enjoyed it very much!!! You must
read it!!!”
Where is the value in such a review? Anyone could write something like this
without even reading the book.
Negative reviews weren’t much better. Often they just mirror the reviewer’s
internal frustrations and have very little to do with the book content.
I spent at least a couple of hours looking for a useful book. I read every book
description and read most of the negative reviews. It was a chore. In the end, I
found the perfect book. I’ve referred to it many times during my Kindle career. It
has been amazingly useful. The content is down to earth and relevant. But the
biggest benefit of all has been that I connected with the book’s author. This book
has worked miracles in my writing career.
Today, two years after my first e-book purchase, I have experience, and it is
easier to find a good title, even when I’m picking a book in a new subject area.
I’ve developed a system that helps me to eliminate trash and find valuable titles
within minutes, not hours. I’ve gained my knowledge and experience in a few
different ways. I’m active in author communities, and I was briefly involved in a
Kindle Gold Rush group, so I know more about the market than the average
reader.
I give over this knowledge to you. To utilize it properly, you first need some
background on the publishing landscape on Amazon in general.
Chapter 3: The Sinister Five
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The bulk of book sales are still made by the so-called Big Five. These are
traditional publishers who produce physical books. They also utilize the digital
revolution that Apple and Amazon introduced by selling e-book versions on
different platforms.
Their books are characterized by top quality. They should be. The Big Five
pumps big money into book production, including several iterations of editing
and proofreading. They hire professional cover designers. They pride themselves
on the quality of books they publish, so it better be true.
From the reader point of view, that’s great. Who wouldn’t want a book without
typos and grammar errors, beautifully formatted, nicely structured, and with
good flow?
Another supposed trait of the Big Five is their superior marketing. That doesn’t
help readers very much, but it’s priceless for authors. An author loves to write
but often doesn’t have the knowledge necessary to promote effectively.
Unfortunately, the Big Five’s superior marketing is a thing of the past. Yes, they
have huge marketing budgets. No, they don’t use their muscle for average
authors. They save these budgets for their prima donnas. The average author will
get lower advances and lower royalties under the excuse that the money will be
used for marketing. An author will naturally agree that marketing is needed. And
yes, the Big Five companies will invest in book promotion but only for books
they decide to promote. They operate as businesses. They bet on the already
established authors who sell tens of thousands of copies with each release.
This works exactly like any other “promise business.” The provider promises