Kindle Unlimited but got this through authorxp...which begs the question of why someone who is talking about being able to help promote others' books uses a site such as authorxp or librarything etcetera which is a review site that gives out free copies of books in hopes of a review for the books.... By the way, he may want to totally rethink sending out review copies in pdf, as neither my computer {chromebook at this time} nor his computer {mobi, kindle cloud} wanted to read this book the way it was formatted. This 'book' was inaquate length due to the massive amounts of unusable, unnecessary, and extraneous/unneeded and repetitive information, which reminded me of War and Peace {the length it felt} but no where near the same amount of usuable interesting information.
Don't like short books of x amount of pages not where the pages are gapped heavily between sections just to up the page count. Why talk about 'guaranteed' results when the book had said right before then that NO results could be 'guaranteed'? Using a 'book' supposedly about how to set up and sell books to basically sell/promote a business promoting books, hmmmm. A book, even one that was gotten, in ANY way at no cost, STILL needs to be READABLE, and that is NOT asking too much of a 'free' book, that I spent part of my internet money to download, or my time which is worth something, or the extra time to write a review, so no, even free books are not free, just as kindle unlimted books are free to read but NOT free to get {and my 6month charge is proof of that}. When I review anything, I HAVE read the book, the whole book always, even if it's painful to do so, because unless I read the whole book I don't want to do a review on it so don't. There is a difference, therefore, between someone who the book claimed trashed a 'free' book versus someone who didn't read it. Again, quit talking about 'guaranteed' results when it was already asserted, several times, that NO ONE can guarantee results, that nobody should because nobody can guarantee results because of all the factors involved {and it then also fails to mention if the business recommendations quotes in that book, regarding other uses of that company, if they sold a lot, a little, or some but not for long or what, so that is irrelevant without the proper background.
There are also such things as nice, professional covers {for this book, that's NOT one}, proofing, sometimes beta or arc readers, paying review sites to set up things so writer can get reviews {which this book did with me and who knows who else here}, and also not causing the reader to feel cheated, even or especially on a 'free book' that the margins are wide, the gaps are wide between chapters, there are orphaned sentences that end up being a whole page until another chapter, and so on. As for stopping to promote another one of how to book or company worse yet, before even getting to the actual parts of this book, uh no, just NO, and more so with the extra gap between chapters or whateve that that caused. So far, this book with all the gaps and spaces and skips is short {but in a bad way} and painful {in a very bad way}. For a book that claims to know how to find things and promote and all that, talking about Bing is so glaringly bad and more so next to google. The analogies and comparisons used are unsuitable and confusing as well. As far as numbers and stats, I don't find them boring {used to be an accountant} but was also a language major, and seeing something such as 0,03 {yes, that's a comma there not a period}, and in a book talking about all the things to do when trying to sell a book, one should be proofing {and this may be covered but hasn't been so far in the drawn out other useless junk}.
"how many of the people clicking through to your Amazon page even have a Kindle to purchase your eBook?...uh what does that have to do with ANYthing? Heard of kindle cloud? How about ereaders? How about kindle for pc, for mac, for andoid {phones and tablets}? "It’s just not in lead generation for authors who want to sell books." WHAT does that sentence even mean, really: I know 4 different languages {counting British and American English as 1} plus computer languages, an immense vocabulary, and have NO idea what is talking about. The language skills and lack thereof combined with fragmented sentences, run on sentences, weird synax and sentence structure, side examples that only serve to confuse not to illustrate or illuminate, and errors such in spelling and punctuation {i.e. , instead of .} make this book almost unreadable. Glaring mistakes such as 'pay anything from' when it shold be 'pay any amount from', and as an ex-accountant even I find your 'stats' confusing and not believable or usable. Comparing apples to oranges, or social media to book promo sites, makes no sense. Made more sense then quoting Galaxy Quest, but still.... As for the {supposed} cost of book promotion via bookbub versus social media, it would not have made much more sense, but a little, if the figures for that subject had not been split between 2 pages, top of one and bottom of the other} and being more than a little suspect as to their computed validity. 'We' did not share the conversions figures; the book sort of kind of but not really put them out there and then I basically said it was flawed and incompete and confusing.
The book makes it seem as if marketing and promotion is the same thing, when they're not, because promotion is part of the overall marketing mix but all of marketing consists of price, product, place, and promotion; so marketing can exist without promotion but promotion doesn't exist without marketing. In 'The Magic Quadrant' {quadrant is each of four quarters of a circle so again making no sense} addressing TWO {not 4} questions of which will deliver the best revenue for the marketing money then which will have the best reach, presumes {wrongly} that these two things are totally separate and independent of each other, when they very much are not. Free book promotions do not take in to account the fact that at least some of the time those free books result in sales of other {not free} books by that writer and/or more/new reviews. Also, "Once your book is enrolled in KDP Select, you can offer it for free to readers for up to 5 days out of each 90-day KDP Select enrollment period. Because your book is available for free during a free book promotion, you will not receive royalties for it while the promotion runs.If the digital version of your book appears to be available for pre-order, for sale, or for free elsewhere (such as on your website or blog, or a third party’s website), then it is not eligible for KDP Select. NONE of THAT was even mentioned, not even hinted at, and while that does not stop paperback/hardback giveaways, any ARCs would have to be set up and done BEFORE the kdp went in to effect.And again repeating, writers make no money, directly, from free book promos BUT there are quite a few that will only look for books or writers they have read before, so without freebie books there would be no extra exposure to those people at all.
Again, after saying many many times that nothing can be guaranteed, by anyone, the book gives a list of people who supposedly do just that, for a fee, in the book promotion business, but it's promoting free books, which this book keeps saying does little to nothng for a writer. Really fail to see what 'providing expected results based on the results of their customers is also great to see' as {first} that sentence doesn't make sense, {second} basing 'results' of their customers {currently involved one or some of the others?, because others not in same genre or whatever is meaningless} and if the customer then {third} based on just what information, especially if they have only had the 1 book out, not very established or whatever else. Once again book is back to saying it/the company can guarantee results, when that is a lie, because keeps repeating {when not talking about htis book/company} no one could guarantee results several times before, only to come back with promotion business and a couple of others in the same type business and try to claim that any of those CAN guarantee results. The $2.99 promotions are not going to work if something such as the free promotions or other ways of getting customers to know of the writer have not been laid first. Egaging reader{s} by giving away a book with a personalized signature or whatever not also makes no sense, because not only is there no money off of that, but it's worse than free because the writer has to pay to send the physical book. I can understand mentions of googling, maybe, but there is no reason to keeping pushing Bing, all the promotion in the world can't help Bing.
Then it goes back to claiming that something could influence 20% of the visitors, yet earlier had stated that the click throughs and other attemps only ended up with less than half of one percent. Judging from what Amazon success indicates influence on which books are promoted due to prior sales, when I know plenty of people that do not read in detail the bookbub/freebooksy and other site offerings {book bub's catergories are laughable} and therefore THAT is where 'free book does not equate' pops up yet again because even if I dowload a handful of romances that does not mean that amazon knowing that and then suggesting those type books will even get noticed because it has no bearing on anything for me, I'm never going to read them so never going to rate them. Then it goes back to that {WRONG} area that mentions even though without proper marketing sales mean nothing, so hardly number one importance, then go on to claim a fair number of reviews {although as with this review a 1 or 2 star will lower your score quite a bit} and saying a decent cover when this one is iffy at best and doesn't look to have anything to do with the the subuect absolutely makes no sense.
Regardless of 'understanding' of the cover size, from being a tech as well as messing with the kindle publishing set up, it can't de-rank someone because of picture size being too small because if it's under a certain size, Amazon won't let it be use it anyway. Telling someone the best way to get noticed is to get on the best selling lists also can't be right, because earlie said it was useless to be on the free best seller list, and that as far as paid list that if book were not at the upper area that few would go beyond a page or 2, yet gave nothing in all the rampling to really say how to do that, even though that is the type of thing the company owned by this book writer is supposed to do. It doesn't take in to account that bookbub and freebooksy and perhaps other book sites lead to amazon when a book is clicked on so there all over again is the free books matter part although keep saying it, is not so, and that amazon is a very hard site to use for such things as book searches so it is usually other book sites leading to there which even that being possibly muted or void/void ranking wise because claimed over and over that free books account for very little. That also means that for those who DO use those types of sites that those sites have their own categories {freebooksy way less, but as in less categories so better in most ways} with sub and sub sub genres, many or them highly overlapping, but more importantly by the book's own admission someone would only be clicking on the few categories they cared about or else would miss some books altogether because they didn't have a category or were thrown in with some catebory not usually checked for a particular genre. {I click on all of freebooks's except the one, think it says chick lit or something} but only on half or less of bookbub's {so no romance or any of the half dozen or more that is some kind of 'romance'} and count in a few that claim {for example} sci-fi/e.g. time travel romance, so the first word is time travel NOT romance but rarely are NOT riddled with plots and subplots that would make 50 shades of grey at least go hmmm if not blush and turn away/
Since viewers do not look beyond the first first page of the first 20 books why would it matter or what purpose would it serve to get up to even #20? Then claim that bundles or freebie/buy 1 get x# works, when before over and over were saying freebie days were basically useless and cheaper books were almost that way because you could mark then 2.99 are higher and {TECHNICALLY} make as much? Now flip back to claiming that free books do help in some way, ranking or otherwise, when just spent several pages saying that they didn't. The movie, television, and geek refernces are just making this too short but too long {to read} book even more aggravating than even the metaphors which are so out of place. Bitly and shorturl has 'issues' with working right/linking customers over with their URL nonsense, anyone with an inkling of computer knowledge knows this, knows it has been happening 'forever', and tend to do links in ways that, well, actually link right. Back to no free/99 cent books, yet said those for ranking, and now it's talking about sales, which means you can't figure out how the 2, even though they do have to work together, are not incompaible and have to have a blalance, otherwise doing the 1 parts hurts the other and vice versa.
And no, bookbub {nor freebooksy} are 'all about subscription' sent out every day; many do as I do, which is to simply visit the site every day, because the email is rather useless {and in the case of bookbub categories very useless}. Oh, NOW you want to say reviews are important, now that are hawking THIS book and the company supposed services, hmmmm. "1. First consider what your goal is before using any of these services. Take your time to analyze the benefits of each service, and ask yourself which ones come closest to what you are seeking– More sales? More reviews? More visibility? SINCE WHEN WERE THESE THINGS EITHER OR, they GO together, in some degree or other, but NOT separate. The best recommendation, that someone could make to this book, is to learn how to proberly space and format and proof the book, since this book that talks some about needing to do that, did NOT do it, make it comprehensible and less confusing, and reproof for large gaps and other irritation. Would have been much easier reading the book if didn't keep falling asleep from boredom and the repetitious nature of the book. God the lack of correct formatting is giving me a spliting migraine. NO, just because I bought a book I am NOT more likely to post a 'good' {higher star} review; how I got the book doesn't matter to me, just whether it is readible and interesting {of which this book is neither}.
'Verified Review' is for those who purchase the book? No, not exactly; 'freebie' days 'sales' are considered Verified, as long as the account use has spent more than x amount of $$ on ANY purchases on the site, and it's a one shot thing so once I spent that amount {years ago} I will ALWAYS be verified for freebie day books, because amazon puts those under sold/paid, and that is yet another reason for freebie days, to have Verified reviews not just reviews {although non-verfied such as from kindle unlimited of any type, regardless of reviewer} are still there but have to be seen by clicking on the 'see all reviews', but yes they still count on the percent of people who liked/didn't liked reviews star average/rating.Either you SHOULD know this already, or you SHOULD be telling the entire truth, or you SHOULD know better, not just the ones think will help attempt to sell your book promo company servies. I actually read/review books, a lot, daily, and I have noticed whether my stars {or lack of them} have changed the overall rating of the book; they DO, verified or NOT. No, more readers do not prefer pysical books, it is about half and half now due to ereaders and audio book players and so on. And 'traditional publishing' would by nature of its name mean NO ebooks, so even self published soft and hard covers are only non-traditional by way of who published them, not how. The 'recap' was doubly boring, doubly unnecessary, and triply redundantly useless.