Millionaire Bootcamp for Authors (Stephanie Hale)

Ummm...yeah.

I checked the link and it appears this is all about self publishing as there is not a mainstream author among the group. They are all self published how to guru's, which are the ones making money off of self published authors...

That web page is in what I call the "I'm a scammer" format. You can recognize it from across the room.

There has to be someone who's selling that template to would-be bunko steerers.

Wow. And yet, I'm sure they will be shilling to a packed house.

Is it awful that I saw "60 E-books Sold" under one of the people and thought it meant he'd sold sixty copies? It took me a minute to realize that it actually meant sixty different books.

kaitie said:

Is it awful that I saw "60 E-books Sold" under one of the people and thought it meant he'd sold sixty copies? It took me a minute to realize that it actually meant sixty different books.

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And I think they're conflating "e-books" with "self-published books", which always seems to happen in discussions about self-publishing.

The ad makes me sad. Also, this caught my eye:

Millionaire Boot Camp for Suckers said:

• The average book sells under 250 copies per year... and less than 3000 over its lifetime.

• The average annual income of a writer in the UK is £16,500.

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I'm having trouble reconciling those two statements. The first seems too low. (Do they mean "average book published by trade publishers", or "all books published by any means"?) The second seems too high. (£16,500 is about $26,000.) I'm picturing an average British writer, selling 250 copies of a book every year, with a royalty of $100 per book.

The average book sells under 250 copies per year... and less than 3000 over its lifetime.

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The last time I saw that bogus statistic they were saying the average book sells 500 copies per year. I guess the explosion of self-published titles has really brought things down.

I suppose that when you average all the sales, from J. K. Rowling down through the typical self-publisher who's lucky if he manages to sell a copy to his mum, the numbers might look like that. But as far typical trade-published books, the sales stats are quite different.

If what these fellows are trying to prove were actually true, no publishing house could remain in business for a year. Yet some have continued for over a century (e.g. Scribner's).

kaitie said:

Is it awful that I saw "60 E-books Sold" under one of the people and thought it meant he'd sold sixty copies? It took me a minute to realize that it actually meant sixty different books.

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You're not awful at all. I had exactly the same thought.

It's quite clear from their pitch that the secret to making millions is to write a book or two (or 60), revealing the secret of making millions -- which is to sell dubious get-rich-quick schemes to the gullible and naive through useless seminars.

How do you make money in a gold rush? Find a lot of gold, very quickly. Or start selling things to the people who either haven't found any gold, or have found a tiny amount of gold and desperately want to find more.

Yeah. In the California Gold Rush the people who reliably made money were the ones selling picks, shovels, and maps-to-the-gold-fields to the miners.

Manuel Royal said:

Originally Posted by Millionaire Boot Camp for Suckers

• The average book sells under 250 copies per year... and less than 3000 over its lifetime.

• The average annual income of a writer in the UK is £16,500

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Manuel Royal said:

The ad makes me sad. Also, this caught my eye:
I'm having trouble reconciling those two statements. The first seems too low. (Do they mean "average book published by trade publishers", or "all books published by any means"?) The second seems too high. (£16,500 is about $26,000.) I'm picturing an average British writer, selling 250 copies of a book every year, with a royalty of $100 per book.

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The line you quoted doesn't say where that average income comes from. It could break down to £500 from book sales and £16,000 from a day job.

And how are they defining "writer" for the statistic? People who write full time AS their day-job? Published authors? Commercially published authors? Anyone who writes, even if they haven't published anything?

The statistic is meaningless without the context of how they are defining "writer".

But some desperate and uninformed writers will sign up...

Shakes head...

Do they need to get the stat from anywhere? They're trying to rip people off. Everything looks designed to rip people off. For all we know, they made it up.

kaitie said:

Do they need to get the stat from anywhere? They're trying to rip people off. Everything looks designed to rip people off. For all we know, they made it up.

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Meaninglessly vague statistics with no cited source for an associated study -- if they didn't make it up, they may as well have.

I've been making a study of online marketing for several months now. That page, those claims, all the 'instructors/speakers', the layout, the catchy splash headlines...

They have hit all the right notes to sell. Including the price that has been slashed by 88% for the LOW LOW PRICE...

And who are they selling to? More people who want to sell online. They say books but that's what these online marketing blogs sell. Books on selling online. Books on motivation...to sell online. Books on productivity...to sell online. How to find your unique slant, how to find your audience, how to stay motivated to write your 300 word blogs ever week!

FIND A NICHE! HAVE SOMETHING INTERESTING TO SAY! HOW TO WRITE EYE-POPPING HEADERS AND SUBJECT TITLES! HOW TO BUILD YOUR EMAIL LIST AS POTENTIAL BUYERS!

...and the sad thing is...yeah, people will buy into it.


You know, I should write a book on how to avoid scams and how to spot hard sell marketing.

*goes to sign up for The Millionaire Bootcamp*

I love how they're like, "Oh yeah, here's my 'How to be a Gazillionaire' book. And all the other books I published to become a gazillionaire? They're under a pen name, so yeah."

I'm sure they have some source or another for their misleading statistics, lest they be charged with false advertising.

Huh, so Ms Hale used to help run the writing course at Oxford? I would have said pure huckster just going by the Million Dollar Super Ebook Plan page, or whatever it's called.

My money's on that none of those people featured on that page are millionaires from writing. Millionaires yes, but each one of them look like sales people, and most run internet businesses of which their books are about.

Thank you for your comments as all feedback is helpful to me in understanding other writers’ points of view.

I was Assistant Director of Creative Writing at Oxford University, and was also Literature Development Officer for The Arts Council of England.

I have a Creative Writing MA from the University of East Anglia, having studied with the late Malcolm Bradbury and Whitbread winner, Rose Tremain. I am also founder of Oxford Literary Consultancy.

In short, I have worked with some of the world's most famous and successful authors over the past 20 years.

I understand your scepticism, but note that none of you have attended any of my publishing seminars. So I suggest you contact me direct for a complimentary seminar ticket or a 1:1 mentoring session. You can then decide first-hand whether I am a person of integrity and whether I can help you achieve your publishing goals.

Regarding the figures on book sales and writers' incomes, these are taken from research by Nielsen BookScan and The Society of Authors.

The speakers (including myself) have literary agents and mainstream publishers - namely Hay House, Robert Hale Ltd, Aufbau Verlag, and Wiley Publishers - though some are self-published.

(Personally, I do not define a person’s success by whether they have a mainstream publishing deal but by whether they achieve their own personal goals - whether selling lots of books, winning literary awards, getting a film option, etc.)

These facts were all included in the sales page you were referring to. I hope this will allay some of your scepticism.

Wishing you every success with achieving your publishing goals.

Settling in. This should prove ... interesting.

In my experience, any website that has a load of "testimonials" is always going to be selling something and never fails to set my BS meter slamming into the red zone.

The claim that any writer can boost their work up to the NYT bestseller list is ludicrous. If it was that easy, we'd all know about it (it'd be all over Google for free) and we'd be doing it.

I can see why many of the speakers at this workshop are likely rolling in cash, the ones who do have books (on marketing) up on Amazon have priced them at ridiculously high levels.

Authors, bestselling writer Kevin J. Anderson--who IS on the NYT bestseller list--is giving a proper seminar on how to market one's books. Its guest speakers are writers and editors we've heard of and makes no silly claims of gold in them thar digitals, just nuts and bolts for writers to improve their lot.

http://superstarswriting.com/

It ain't cheap, I sure can't afford it, but I'd go if I could.