I came across The Choose Yourself Guide To Wealth by James Altucher, and the sales pitch read like something I would write, but I decided to make some modifications.
Original:
This is a bold book by James Altucher because he not only gives you a new map for the new financial landscape, but he also has skin in the game. This is the first financial book in which the author REVEALS HOW HE, PERSONALLY, MAKES HIS OWN MONEY. We are living in an epic period of change, danger and opportunity. The economy is crashing and booming every few years. People are getting fired and replaced by computers and Chinese workers. The stock market crashes with regularity. Every “fix” from the government makes things worse. The Old World has been demolished… and people are desperate for answers. James Altucher’s “The Choose Yourself Guide To Wealth” contains those answers. This is the field guide to the “New World” we live in. You can play by the old rules and get left behind, or you can use these new ideas and become wealthy. This is not a book for the faint of heart. Read at your own risk, because sometimes the truth is hard to take. But for those who are ready to hear, James provides an updated map of the new territory for generating wealth and freedom. This book is the eye-opener of the century, it is the guide to building, keeping, and investing your money and breaking free from the chains of rusted, old thinking.
My Version:
We are living in an epic period of change, danger, wealth creation, IQ, and opportunity. In 2008 the old economy was reshuffled and the cards re-dealt with smart people tending to get the best hands. Meanwhile, less intelligent, less creative people people are getting fired and replaced by computers and Chinese workers. The stock market keeps going up. Too big to fail policy has been a success, like it or not. Since 2008 and especially since 2013, the old world of liberalism, social justice, and overpaid jobs has been demolished… and people are desperate for answers. This website contains those answers. This is the field guide to the “New Era” we live in. You can play by the old rules and get left behind, or you can use these new ideas and gain understanding. This is not a website for the faint of heart. Read at your own risk, because sometimes the truth is hard to take. But for those who are ready to hear, I provide an updated map of the new territory for attaining understanding, and as they say ‘knowledge is power’. This website could be the eye-opener of the century, it is the guide to understanding our economy & the world, and breaking free from the chains of rusted, old thinking.
As for the book itself, let’s read the reviews. A lot of five-stars, so it must be good, right? Well, you wouldn’t know by reading the reviews, because the reviews are garbage, the product of promotional campaign by the author to inflate the book’s Amazon rankings and ratings.
Here is one such ‘review’, obviously a shill:
Seriously?
Or another one, in which scheme is revealed:
Apparently the author must have had a mailing list and sold the first batch of copies for 99 cents, requiring that the purchaser leave a good review. The result was a flood of low-quality 5-star reviews. Then the price was raised to $22 after the promotion ended.
The are some probably legitimate reviews among the sea of fake ones, but the problem is fake reviews are bad for readers, who buy the book on the expectation that these ‘five-star’ reviews are representative of those who actually read the book and liked it a lot, not people who were enticed into leaving a high rating for a discounted price. This is a fairly common practice on Amazon though, and it makes sense from an economic and psychology standpoint. If you sell a book for nearly free, the recipient will less likely be annoyed if the quality is poor and will actually feel indebted to the author for getting such a ‘good’ deal even if the content isn’t very good, leaving a ‘five-star’ review as way of repaying the author for his generosity. Then the herd/bandwagon effect kicks in as normal people buy the book based on the shill reviews, creating a feedback loop of more buyers and more reviews. It sucks for buyers, who get burned by the fake reviews, and for the authors who don’t use shill marketing, but I don’t see this problem going away anytime soon. I guess if you are looking for a ‘guide to wealth’, one such way is to write fake reviews since there is a lot of demand.