Sophie Howard must see sales slowing for her Blue Sky Amazon course, which teaches you how to sell physical products on Amazon, because now she’s spamming me with ads for her new Kindle Publishing Income course, which makes it sound like eBooks are where the real money’s at. And I gotta say, her marketing’s hilarious. And by hilarious, I don’t mean like that time I had too many martinis and my girlfriends had to peel me up off the sticky dance floor and put me in an Uber.
Actually, now that I think of it, it is kinda like that. Like kinda funny, looking back, but also kinda sad. Like, “Girl, get ahold of yourself.” Only, in this case, it has to do with the way Sophie’s presenting this thing, and not so much her blood alcohol level. Examples? Sure, but only if you insist. The subhead on her landing page reads “The huge Kindle business opportunity no one is talking about…” Sophie, hun, you’re talking about it, the Mikkelsen twins are talking about it, and about a million YouTubers are too.
Why does every guru who runs ads to sell their course do this? Why do they feel the need to fib and act like it’s brand new or under the radar or both? Why not just say, “Hey, you’ve probably heard of this. It’s been around for a while, it’s proven, but you know what? The competition’s not as bad as you might think. Here, let me show you.” Right? Like, you could just omit that little white lie altogether and be honest with people and I doubt anyone would be any less interested, would they?
Next comes the headline: “How Even A Tech Doofus And Non-Writer Like Myself Makes A ‘Surgeon’s Salary’ From Kindle Working 5 Hours A Week.” Okay, credit where credit’s due. The word “doofus” was a delightful surprise, and “surgeon’s salary” has a nice ring to it and paints a stunning picture. Props to Sophie’s copywriter. At least, in terms of creativity, right? But what about accuracy? Does that matter at all? Are we to believe Sophie Howard, an internet multi-millionaire, is terrible at tech and can’t write to save her life? Pfft, please.
But I’m not done with this headline. The average surgeon makes about four hundred grand a year. So Sophie’s saying that in just five hours a week, someone who can hardly log in to Facebook and who can barely write their own name, can create a four hundred K a year income, all by publishing eBooks on Kindle? Riiight, got it. And I mean, she’s really doubling down on this claim. ‘Cause, below the headline, there’s a picture of a surgeon looking miserable in the operating room, and then a stock photo of a mom playing on the beach with her kid, like: which would you rather do?
I’d love to see one person (who fits that description) who bought her Kindle Publishing Income course who’s now making that kinda money, on Kindle, in a handful of hours a week. And I get it. Sophie’s selling ya on the idea that you can outsource these books. But even searching for quality ghostwriters and hiring them and managing them and going back and forth with ’em, not to mention the fact that you still gotta list the damn things on Amazon and KDP and wherever, and then, let’s not forget, market the living crap outta them? Yeah, that’s still gonna take way more than five hours, to do it right.
And we still haven’t gotten to the part where you’re pretending some half-baked book that you paid five hundred bucks for is somehow gonna turn into this bestseller that makes you passive income for life. I mean, yeah, you can trick a few folks into buying it at first, but sooner or later, if it sucks, aren’t they gonna say so in their flaming one-star reviews? And then what? How do ya get more “hands-free sales” after that? I’m sure there’s a happy medium where you can pay more for better quality and not run into that issue, but now that surgeon’s salary is that much farther away because your expenses are so high.
