A title longer than the book.
28 Books to $100K: A Guide for Ambitious Authors Who Want to Skyrocket Their Passive Income By Writing a Book a Month: By Michelle Kulp (2020): 7 out of 10: 28 Books’ introduction starts out with the following quote. “In 2019, I read a blog post by Written Word Media that said the average self-published author who makes $100K has 28 books published. I immediately thought, “I need to make a $100K with my books! I’m going to write a book a month and create a 6-figure passive income stream SOLELY from my royalties.””
Okay, so raise your hand if you can see the logical fallacy in that statement. Lots of hands, I see. Good for you. So this get rich slowly scheme starts out with a premise on quicksand. It does not get much better.
Here is the basic advice. Write short books. (Seriously, the first chapter is “Why Shorter is Better”). Write non-fiction books. Write to market. (Books about how to get rich quick seem to do well.) If you write enough books on a subject, people will assume you are an expert on that subject and you can parlay that into consulting and speaking gigs. Did I mention that the books need to be short?
Okay, so I have no plans to follow this scheme. It seems like a lot of work. Much like one ponders why some criminals didn’t get a regular job that paid better, had benefits and did not involve the risk of arrest. I am curious about the actual motivation to write and publish a book a month. Sure, you should make some money. Of course you could make more money, just by, I don’t know spitballing here, working.
Writing books for 28 months at a blistering pace seems an unlikely scenario. The author herself doesn’t have 28 books for sale on Kindle, so she is apparently still working through the scheme.
So you might ask. Mr. Cinematic Diversions, what is your plan to be a successful author? Okay, fair enough.
A: Marry someone rich or with a good job.
B: Call yourself an author
C: Profit
This is a try and true method that has been used by painters and musicians for thousands of years.
So why am I recommending 28 Books to $100K?
Well, it is short… (Rimshot) and it has some solid advice outside of the overall scheme. In some ways Author Michelle Kulp is correct. The best advertisement for your last book is your next book. Dictating your first draft (at least parts of it) is a reasonable technique made much easier with modern cellphones and improved voice recognition AI. You should pay for an excellent cover and get a professional editor. If you want your book to reach many people, you need to think about how you are going to market it outside of your Verizon group (Friends and Family).
Her ideas on gaming the system, however, should be taken with a grain of salt. It is a lot of work and the payoff is hardly guaranteed. Alas, what works at the beginning of the year may fail by August.
But again, as Michelle moves quickly from subject to subject, there is some expert advice to be had. She also provides a list or resources that even if you don’t use as a new author will give you a good idea what you may need.
The fly in the ointment is simple. If you are going motivate yourself to write 28 books, no matter how short, chances are you will want to write the kind of books that you want to read. Otherwise why bother. There are a lot of easier ways to make money. If you want to express yourself and create art, you can’t do it for commerce. If you are not writing to express yourself and create art? Good luck keeping that up over 28 books.
Some YouTube asides
Below, I have a video of Michelle Kulp on Marc Guberti’s Breakthrough Success Podcast. Originally uploaded on May 15, 2019, as of this posting it has 74 views. Including me. (Do I need a comment. Or just allow you to come to your own conclusion. You are a smart person I saw your hand raised at the beginning of this review)
Below I have a video from author Bethany Atazadeh where she explains how, through the magic of formatting, she makes her new 31k word novel (?) The Secret Gift look just like her 50k word novels. I mean okay… I am not sure that is something you want to be sharing with your fans who have yet to buy the book (She is showing off the gallery proof). Perhaps that is a tip or trick Bethany might want to hold closer to the vest.
From the reaction of her husband at the beginning of the video, however, it sounds like Bethany has fully embraced the Cinematic Diversion method of being an author rather than the Animal Farm style workhorse method exposed by 28 Books to 100k.
In Conclusion
Overall, I found 28 Books an informative read that is well written and organized. (Michelle Kulp worked in the legal field for 17 years. She knows how to write.) If you can ignore the infomercial style advice sprinkled throughout (You too can be a millionaire buying real estate, as an Amazon reseller, writing non-fiction books about becoming a millionaire) it is a light but worthwhile read.