I love reading about how people write and try to catch whatever tips and insight they might have about the process.
This was 54 pages that read more like a blog post than a book, which I suppose is fine if the goal is to write these short books to publish via Amazon. As far as that goes, it was a practical and actionable guide for writing and publishing these sorts of books quickly. It read like an extremely simplified and narrow reduction of things I’ve commonly read about the writing process.
My primary issue with the book, which I should have sensed from the capital letters in the title, is that there was very little consideration for what anyone would love. Scott advocated for developing and considering customer “avatars” and carefully addressing their needs and challenges, but the theme seemed to be more about publishing for maximum sales and avoiding having a book “slaughtered” by bad reviews with the minimum steps required for decency. If the title was more honest, it would be more like “How to Churn Out Nonfiction Amazon eBooks 21 Days at a Time – That Readers BUY!”
More broadly, and not a fault of this book specifically, is that I don’t want to spend attention on books like this. People write just as thoroughly on blogs, and I don’t confuse this nonfiction title (or the type Scott advocates) with inefficient, soulful acts of writing that aspire to do more than jockey for sales on amazon.com. Scott’s “design” advice and aspiration to “fill each book with excellent content” sums things up well. Design is more than arranging clip art and text, and writing is more than filling a book with content.
It felt like the New York Post’s guide to journalism for grocery store checkouts rather than a committed guide to writing nonfiction.
It’s easy to be a critic and much harder to actually publish your work though, so I have to give Scott credit for doing exactly what he describes and sharing how it works for him.