You told me you knew the “secret” to turn my body into a “fat-melting machine” without doing any aerobic training and by focusing on special “super foods” like acai berry. You said I could lose 30 pounds in 30 days, which got me questioning your math.<\/p>\n
There are 3,500 calories in a pound of fat. My sedentary metabolism burns about 2,300 calories a day, and I can’t go much below 1,800 a day without risking metabolic slowdown (and an overwhelming desire to eat everything in sight). So even if I watch everything I eat, that still leaves 3,000 more calories to burn off each day. Does your program involve the equivalent of running a marathon each day, except without any actual aerobic exercise?<\/p>\n
…I typed your name into Google, followed by the words “scam” and “ripoff.” (Sorry for not trusting you, but in this economy we all need to be careful with our money.) I have to tell you, it was like slipping into the Matrix. I couldn’t find any real complaints about your program. Did they disappear into an alternate universe? I wonder whether the search results were carpet-bombed by robots creating an endless stream of semi-legitimate-looking reviews with four-and-a-half and five stars, all with links to buy your book. Are the machines rising up?<\/p>\n
I also learned that your “special introductory rate” has been in place for the last few years. Isn’t that sort of like a used car salesman saying he’s got a few other buyers on the line?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
He IDs (and mocks) it all: the inflated, too-good-to-be-true promises; the use of stock photos;\u00a0selected testimonials, bogus supp recommendations\u00a0and phony “review” sites. Good stuff.<\/p>\n
\nAlmost…<\/p>\n
For the record, I do have some reservations about this bit:<\/p>\n
I like to read and have many fitness books on my shelf. Most of them cost about $20 to $25, have instructional pictures taken by professional photographers and are professionally edited and sold by respected publishing houses.<\/p>\n
I noticed that if I want your book I have to act fast to get the “special introductory price.” The special price is $39, which is quite a bit more than I’m used to paying, and all I get is a PDF document that I have to print myself.<\/p>\n
I wonder: Does your book have pictures? Did you hire a professional editor? After looking at your website I’m thinking the answer is probably no.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
As someone who knows more-than-a-little about e-book layout, typography and production, I’m well aware that there are a lot of cheesy-looking, poorly-produced e-books out there.\u00a0Many of the “books” I’ve seen are\u00a0just haphazardly assembled\u00a0Word files, printed to pdfs. And, yeah… when I see an unimpressive-looking doc, I tend to do\u00a0exactly what\u00a0Fell did above: assume that poor production values are symptomatic of a scammy product.<\/p>\n
And often, this turns out to be true.<\/p>\n
Except that I’m also well aware of certain\u00a0exceptions to this “rule” – homely-looking e-books that are virtual goldmines of solid information.<\/p>\n
Deal is: there are some<\/em> sharp\u00a0cookies out there who are very, very good at what they do… but are NOT good at the aforementioned layout and typography stuff. And getting published by a conventional (dead tree) publisher is a real crap-shoot. And if you don’t have a lot of surplus cash at your disposal, and are unsure of your eventual sales, it’s tough to invest in a professional editor, photographer and graphic artist\/designer for a self-published book\u00a0– you could end up thousands of dollars in the hole before you sold even a single copy.<\/p>\nThus, the unimpressive\u00a0Word-file-turned-pdf. It isn’t always a due to indifference… sometimes it’s just due to a lack of $$$ and\/or skills.<\/p>\n
And, the reason for the higher price\u00a0Fell mentions\u00a0is\u00a0because such books are typically marketed\u00a0via Clickbank or other affiliate marketplaces.\u00a0A typical split from an affiliate sale is 30% to the author, 70% to the affiliate. This might seem like a bad deal for authors, but the use of affiliates means access to their lists… which leads to sales\u00a0that wouldn’t have been made at all without their help. The higher price gives the affiliate an incentive to market the book through his\/her network AND provide the author with some<\/em> profit as well.<\/p>\nSo, with all due respect to Mr. Fell, you can’t always judge an (e-)book by it’s cover (I do, however, draw the line when it comes to typos and grammatical errors…\u00a0a legit\u00a0author ought to at least be able to write and spell correctly… or find a proofreader who can).<\/p>\n
Like I said, though, he’s\u00a0got the other stuff pegged, so go… read… enjoy!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James S. Fell, the author of the\u00a0“In-Your-Face Fitness” feature in the L.A. Times,\u00a0has a great column this week: “Friend Through Thick and Thin?” With tongue firmly in cheek, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,7,28],"tags":[551],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5452"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5452"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9577,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5452\/revisions\/9577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}