Seeking Out One-Star Advice
I read a lot of books; the hard part is finding the good ones. Reading fiction is one thing, because you can just pick a story that sounds entertaining, but I tend to read business books and titles that contains general ideas about the world. I don't know about you, but in an age of an almost unlimited supply of books to read on Amazon.com, I have to use some kind of criteria in order to thin the herd.
One way I narrow the selection is to look at the average star rating of books from all users that posted a review. If it's a title or author I'm not interested in anyway, I make sure that it's got at least four out of five stars before I even consider it. I'm looking for the "social proof" element. That is, if it worked for everyone else, maybe it'll work for me.
Sounds good in theory, until you realize that most great ideas, really brilliant insights, are rejected by the majority when they're first brought to light. If it's a book with ideas that really challenge the status quo, most people are going to hate it. They're going to give it bad reviews and write comments about how "off his rocker" the author was.
Not all good books will fall into this trap. A lot of good ones contain ideas that, while new and groundbreaking, still resonate with people, so they end up taking off. Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point is a good example of that. And a lot of books that get poor reviews are just plain bad due to poor writing, or because the author actually was off his rocker. Kevin Tredeau falls into the latter category.
But I think that we should be paying attention to new books that are getting bad reviews from people on Amazon who seem to be resistant to change. The ideas might be untested or have yet to prove themselves successful in reality, and yes, that's a scary prospect to face. But if the ideas seem good, in spite of the resistance of a few Amazon customers, you end up in possession of knowledge that few others in the world have.
Finding the ideas backed by social proof is easy; just ask your friends for suggestions. The potential ROI is much higher if you seek out ideas that have value because they are scarce.
Better yet, write your own book, and don't try to get good reviews. Write something unique. If you do it right, some people will hate it, but then it's much more likely others will love it.
One way I narrow the selection is to look at the average star rating of books from all users that posted a review. If it's a title or author I'm not interested in anyway, I make sure that it's got at least four out of five stars before I even consider it. I'm looking for the "social proof" element. That is, if it worked for everyone else, maybe it'll work for me.
Sounds good in theory, until you realize that most great ideas, really brilliant insights, are rejected by the majority when they're first brought to light. If it's a book with ideas that really challenge the status quo, most people are going to hate it. They're going to give it bad reviews and write comments about how "off his rocker" the author was.
Not all good books will fall into this trap. A lot of good ones contain ideas that, while new and groundbreaking, still resonate with people, so they end up taking off. Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point is a good example of that. And a lot of books that get poor reviews are just plain bad due to poor writing, or because the author actually was off his rocker. Kevin Tredeau falls into the latter category.
But I think that we should be paying attention to new books that are getting bad reviews from people on Amazon who seem to be resistant to change. The ideas might be untested or have yet to prove themselves successful in reality, and yes, that's a scary prospect to face. But if the ideas seem good, in spite of the resistance of a few Amazon customers, you end up in possession of knowledge that few others in the world have.
Finding the ideas backed by social proof is easy; just ask your friends for suggestions. The potential ROI is much higher if you seek out ideas that have value because they are scarce.
Better yet, write your own book, and don't try to get good reviews. Write something unique. If you do it right, some people will hate it, but then it's much more likely others will love it.