When someone advertises that they are a “Best Seller Author” – it sounds so WOW right!
But dig a little deeper, and often in the internet marketing world you soon find the claim is baseless.
First of all, you can call yourself whatever you like, who is going to bust your chops over what you call yourself unless they claim that your assertion of being a best-seller author was the reason they hired you and then they lost money due to this lie. It’s going to be a long drawn legal out fight, look at someone like Tai Lopez – seriously. If you want to talk shit, let’s face it, no one is going to stop you.
But don’t you find it ODD that people write a book, then ask all their friends, followers, fans, family and so on, to buy it?
And not just one copy, some ask you buy a bundle! Hey, in return they will give you a free coaching session!
Really?
Yup. Really.
WHO WOULD Want a coaching session from a “coach” who basically manipulates and thwarts purchase statistics to inflate their ego with a potential (because we haven’t even got to what “best seller” really means yet) best seller title?
What kind of person (or coach) is that?
What about the author who says “I’ll send you my book free, you just pay for shipping” – It’s a well known fact in the industry that the shipping cost is never what the seller is charging you, it’s less. So they are profiting from that tactic too – But can we go back to the “Get a copy free” and I’ll send it to you…
Did you ever wonder why they did that?
It’s to manipulate their stats on the first week the release the book, so it looks like a best-seller, when in fact they’ve been taking orders since the day they starting asking people to buy it for free! I’ve even seen people say “I’ll pay you!”
Then they wait until they have enough orders in, to top the charts of all the sellers for that week, in the book category they are in, then they release, their book goes to no.1 for a day – they screenshot that result, and share with the world, for the rest of their life, that they were/are a best seller author!
Now I’m not a huge fan of any of these tactics. When I released my first book years ago, I actually just went to no.1 of my category organically, and I screenshoted it. (hell yeah).
But I didn’t ask anyone to buy it, I didn’t pay them, I didn’t say “I’ll pay” = I didn’t ask them to buy 10 – or 20 – some ask you to buy 100 – yup 100!
I just wrote it, spent about 3mths doing that, then finally released it. It did well, great, didn’t pay off my mortgage, never will, but I’m not an author in the “career” sense, I’m an author in the sense of a person who can string a sentence together and it ads value to the people who read it. That’s all.
And now let’s talk about this title “Best Seller” for a moment.
Best seller, of what you ask? Well, on Amazon for example, where 99% of authors are referring, it is no.1 of their category they listed their book in – for example, for me, it was “advertising” and “multilevel marketing” – wait what? MLM – It ain’t no MLM book, anyway, who cares right.
Now people make a point of saying “NYT Best Seller” but that has been clearly exposed as a completely manipulable stat as well – so let’s face it, they are all BS!!!
My point is this. Don’t be that person – These “authors” (I use the word loosely as they often outsource the writing of their book anyway, and just make the intro a bit personal..) they are sooooo desperate to fabricate how the sales are made, how the book ranks no.1, and so on, it’s just embarrassing.
Of course there are the agencies who have worked with big name companies (using their logos on their website) when in fact one of them worked there as a mail person 30 years ago (but whose going to split hairs right!!) AND there are resumes out there stating people held jobs that never existed, even fake testimonies (there are an abundance of them – I might do another post on that crazy business – big name people you would never expect, clearly lying in their testimonials, oh and the networking strategies they do to “swap” testimonies – amazing…) – but the point is this. At some point, you have to have some self-respect.
I wanted to say I was a best-seller, and for 3 days, in my category on Amazon for my first book I was.
My second book I released last year Sites4SoreEyes, quietly released, didn’t get to no.1 and that’s ok.
I didn’t go on social media and say “Can everyone buy, 5 star review and Share please” and “here’s my link to say thanks in various ways” with suggestions to bulk buy!
No I didn’t do that. I didn’t write it for that reason, and I really don’t think I ever could.
Do I have to?
Every time I hear someone introduced as (or introduces themselves as) a best seller, I cringe a little.
Anyway, back to my boring real world…
