>1. how do you assess whether a book or seminar is worth while purchasing?
There are at least two approaches; a and b below.
a. Scan the ad, blurb, seminar, presentation and give one point to every single incidence of the following:
i. CAPITAL LETTERS
ii. exclamation marks!
iii. underlinings
iv. pages of testimonials
v. 'quick', 'easy', 'tax-effective', 'no cash needed', 'rich', 'millionaire', 'positive cashflow', 'below cost', 'exclusive', 'act now', 'last ever seminar', 'secrets', 'buy wholesale', 'never previously made public' etc
vi. Photos of the guru surrounded by rich doodads
The more points you count, the more caution required.
Of course there is a risk of judging a book by its cover, so time to move to the more rigorous b.
b. If it's a book, pick it up and have a leaf through it. Is its general approach similar to what you're already doing? If so then check to see if it has stuff that allows you to develop further. Or is its role limited to a 'feel-good' confirmation that you're on the right track or providing ideas that you have in other books already purchased?
If it takes a different tack, consider if this approach could be valid for your circumstances (and ethics!) and buy it it it could be. For example I consider cashflow investors should read growth authors like Wakelin and Fitzgerald and vice versa.
The background and credibility of the author is also important. Are they an author who just happens to write about property because it's popular, or someone whose done the investing themselves? On the other hand, if you have one or more Lomas books (for example) the next book may merely cover similar ground and may not be worth buying. And are they trying to use the book to upsell to seminars, etc?
>2. What is the best way to market these items so that it is appealing? Are we becoming more "American" in the way we need to be marketed to - with lots of superlatives, punctuation etc?
I hope not. Our intolerance of BS, spin and pretense is one good thing our culture has got going for it. I never knew how different we were from the Americans until I saw presentations from their gurus.
>I love browsing through bookshops, yet the title and cover of many "help" >books puts me off even browsing through them.
I agree, though as you mention there can be pearls behind the hype veneer.
One of the gurus says that 'success is doing things differently' (or is it doing different things). Who will be the first guru who'll dispense their own medicine and tell their marketers to do things differently and ditch the underlinings, capitals, testimonials, etc?!
Regards, Peter
