Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

As a writer who has a book in each camp ─ professional and self-published ─ I picked up a Netgalley version of "APE" hoping to learn more about the process and to pick up some good tips. The problems with the book are so diverse that it would be better served with a review in list form. Call it "10 Reasons Why I Didn't Like 'APE'." 1. A third of the book is useless. The first 15 percent, four out of 29 chapters, answers why people read books and why you want to write a book. There is a description of traditional publishing and why this is Bad and self-publishing is Good. This is throat-clearing. The other 15 percent is taken up by a glossary of terms are obvious, needs more explanation or self-promoting. 2. Several chapters are useless. Chapter 21, "How to Navigate Amazon" lists the company's acquisitions and its services. Knowing that it sells wine, CDs and clothes has nothing to do with self-publishing. Chapter 17, "How to Upload Your Book," repeats the procedure for uploading your book to the Kindle that you'll find at Amazon's website. Chapter 29, "How We APEd This Book" tells us, for example, that Holly Thomson designed the cover. Why do we need to know this? 3. "APE" is littered with self-promotion. We're told that Guy wrote a book about Google+ (mentioned 30 times), a book on self-branding (19 times); that he loves Apple products (too many to count) and that Steve Jobs talked to him (three times); and that he wrote "APE" because he could not get 500 ebook orders filled from Penguin (eight times). 4. Author House is promoted. The company, recently bought by Penguin, sells overpriced editing, printing and marketing services of debatable value. Kawasaki hedges his recommendation by calling the company "aggressive" and that it has problems with disappointed customers. Then he absolves it of blame by saying with 150,000 customers, "it's bound to have upset some customers. However, I also communicated with several authors who were happy with its services." 5. Kawasaki contradicts his advice. He recommends Googling a company's name with "complaints." If he had, he would have found plenty of reasons to reconsider his recommendation of Author House. He advises to be likeable by accepting others, then hates on a young man wants to write a book about starting his $1 million consulting company. Not very accepting, Guy. He also spends large parts of "APE" complaining that his book publisher was poor at marketing, only to praise McGraw-Hill for promoting his Google+ book effectively. The possibility that some publicists and companies are better at marketing than others didn't seem to occur to him. 6. Some of his advice is dubious or wrong. He advises non-fiction writers to break up text with bullet points and subheads. Oh, Guy, the nonfiction shelves are full of books who don't do this. Some of them are even best-sellers. "Jerks seldom build great brands." Like Howard Stern? Tucker Max? Harvey Weinstein? The "Jackass" crew? Hunter S. Thompson? Unless you mean self-important self-marketers trying to occupy a niche; you might be right there. There's a long section advising to use Adobe's InDesign to create your ebook. I've used InDesign. It's a great program, but it complex. One mistake in following the directions could leave you lost. 7. Some sentences make no sense. "Traditional publishers usually create a handful of designs and then ram them down the throat of authors." I suppose he means that the publisher who is paying you to publish your book has the right to decide how it will be marketed. Color me surprised. "Overdrive aside, publishers and libraries haven't figured out how to lend ebooks." If you mean "they don't lend ebooks the way Guy Kawasaki wants them too, then you're being more accurate. But still wrong. On autographing book covers: "You can send autographed covers to readers for approximately $2 each. These fans can replace their existing cover with the autographed one, and they are more likely to show off their covers to friends and relatives." Does Guy mean dust jackets? And I've been to book signings, and the author always sign inside, never on the cover. I suspect a lot of readers would be nonplussed if they did. But, then, what would Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Washington Post book critic Michael Dirda and best-selling mystery novelist Ian Rankin know about the proper way to sign books? 8. Many chapter quotes are disturbing or make no sense. The decision to provide a nugget of wisdom at the beginning of each chapter seems like a good idea until you have to find something for, say, "How to Sell Your Ebook Through Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Google and Kobo." There you'll find Jung's "As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being," to which one can only mutter, "ooooookay," and move on. Then there's the quote from Fidel Castro: "A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past." There's a big difference between a dictatorship that jails dissidents and homosexuals than a revolution in self-publishing. The award for the most ludicrous quote has to be Chapter 21's "How to Navigate Amazon." It's long, so I won't quote it here, but it's about dolphins engaging in nasal sex. 9. "APE" reprints undigested information. The two pages on copyright is cut-and-pasted from the U.S. government's website. There a sentence warning against using song lyrics, a question I've seen dealt with in more detail (and with better advice) on writing forums. In the chapter on translating your work, there's three pages on the number of foreign-language speakers come from the CIA and Wikipedia. Possibly useful if knowing that there are 91 million Ethiopians will convince you to market your book there, I guess. 10. "'APE's" agenda. When we're asked to watch master swordmaker Gassan Sadaichi "own a niche" by making a sword, I realized what creeps me out about "APE": It is partially a guide to self-publishing, but it's primarily a vehicle to promote Guy Kawasaki, his connections, his books, and his AllTop website. "APE" is not a useless book. The advice on editing, while thin, is sound. The explanation of Lightning Source told me things I didn't know, and the chapters on pitching bloggers and reviewers and creating social media is informative. But these are islands in a sea of mediocre information. "APE" is a frustrating mess that, if it weren't for Kawasaki's wide platform, wouldn't have passed muster at any New York publishing house.