More On Bookwise & Its Founder Robert Allen

Isn't MLM (Multi-level Marketing) just a politically correct way of saying "pyramid scheme" anyway? What writer looking to be taken seriously would want to be connected to that?

In my opinion, corporate America is the pyramid scheme - one guy at the top making all the money and millions of tiny people at the bottom making little of nothing, and their only hope of ever making what that one guy at the top is making is to trample all those people on the way up. So I do not think a new way of distribution, in which each person buys in and has an equal shot is a bad thing.

Do you know what the AUTHOR -- the person who pours years of work into a project -- actually earns on each book sold? And that Amazon's contract makes it even less, unless the publisher wants to walk away in the hole? Any system that works around that and rewards the people who do the work seems like a good thing to me so I really want to see this with an open mind.

I make more from Google Adsense that I do from Amazon and Amazon is a lot harder to deal with. There is no way I would pay for the privilege.

Sandy, the first quote from a Bookwise member says that "you can earn money by way of referring others to stores such as Amazon" which, to me, means that Bookwise just adds a middle man to the referral process - and you have to pay for the right for Bookwise to take a cut!

Correction-- Bookwise has NOTHING to do with Amazon. I'm not sure what that person was meaning to say. Maybe they were referring to the fact that Bookwise is similar to people who make money from referring someone to Amazon? Not sure-- but not really accurate either.

Bookwise is a company that has chosen network marketing as it's business structure. In other words--- instead of paying for commercials, billboards, newspaper or radio ads and other forms of 'traditional' marketing-- it pays it's Associates to do the marketing and they get a 'cut' from each sale. In other words-- the 40-50% of the budget set aside for marketing goes to the Associates who do the marketing rather than the 40-50% going to pay for traditional marketing.

It is just another business structure. Sure-- there have been some BAD mlm businesses (doesn't everyone think of Amway?), just like there have been some BAD traditional businesses (think Enron or hundreds of others who have been in the news, and probably thousands of others we didn't hear about). There are good restaurants and there are bad restaurants-- you quit going to the bad ones, but you don't shun the good ones just because they are restaurants.

Also--- historically there has been a lot of attrition associated with MLMs-- people start their home-based business and for whatever reason-- lack of business know-how, lack of self-motivation, lack of information before starting and finding out it's not what they thought it was, or personal trauma-- they quit the MLM or in other words, their business start-up fails. Did you know that 95% of traditional businesses fail in the first year!?! We just don't know about them or hear about them like we do the MLM stats. The truth is that the Bookwise SUCCESS rate already far exceeds both the traditional stats and other MLM stats. True-- Bookwise is less than a year old, so reliable stats may not be in yet-- but who is going to 'quit' a business where they are already making more than what they are putting out and there are no minimums to meet, etc.? Even if you're only ahead by a few dollars why not keep getting the free books-- right?

Bookwise is the creme de la creme of network marketing. It's about BOOKS-- it's about PERSONAL GROWTH-- it's about being ENLIGHTENED people. I know there are some disgruntled people out there who have negative things to say about Robert Allen because they got involved with businesses that 'USE HIS NAME' because he is the name to use in the financial world-- people have paid $40,000 to be mentored by him on a weekly basis for one year. I pay $35/month to be mentored by him 3-4 times per week! I have had personal contact with him 3-4 times per week over the past 4 months, and my experience has been completely different! He is an incredible man who is wholly focused on helping others and giving back. I am also looking forward to spending a week in London with both Rick and Bob, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, and other best-selling authors and enlightened people. You can't put a dollar value on so many of the benefits Bookwise offers.

I highly recommend that if you are serious about 'knowing'-- see for yourself and make your own judgment. You can be a part a Bookwise absolutely RISK-FREE for one year. If, at that time, you do not feel like your life has been improved because of Bookwise you can get the full $420 ($35/month) investment back-- AND you get to keep the books and, of course, all of the training you have received. At that point you can consider it as having been a forced savings plan of $35/month with your interest being a best-selling book (that's a 50-60% return if you figure low and doesn't give any credit for the training!)

I'd be more than happy to help you get started if you seriously want to find out for yourself about Bookwise and aren't just wanting to bad-mouth them from a place of misinformation. As a bonus, I will also allow you to put a link promoting your book or manuscript on the AmericaTakingAction.com National Education Network. (Just for the record--- this has NOTHING to do with Bookwise-- it is my own project I maintain and not at all associated with Bookwise.) The guest at the last Authorwise training was Richard Paul Evans' Agent and it became clear that YOU (the Author) will need to do LOTS of promotion for your own book before you ever find a publisher-- and THEN you get a whopping 15% of the revenues. That will be good for some-- others have decided they would rather self-publish. Others are undecided and are still waiting to hear more from publishers, other authors, illustrators, etc. The point is that the Authorwise calls provide a plethora of information that would take a budding author MONTHS or even YEARS to find out on their own and can, therefore, in conjunction with having the personal mentoring of people who have already been there and done that, will have the knowledge and the connections to be far more successful in their attempts. Again-- that is just one of the many Bookwise Benefits.

This is a pyramid scheme. I can't imagine how people could think otherwise. I pay $35 a month to get a "free" hardcover book? WTF? I have an Amazon astore that costs me nothing, handles all transactions for me, and pays me each month. Let's be honest, how many people actually make any money buying books at "wholesale" discounts and reselling to friends and family? The only means of making money is if you sign people up beneath you and get a hit on their monthly fees.

If someone is serious about wanting to sell books, they can actually get set up directly with Lightning Source to sell books. LSI is the POD arm of Ingram Distributors, and they work with a lot of internet booksellers.

"Enlightened" seems to be the word y'all are trained to emphasize. I saw it an awful lot on the site.

So, if this business model works so well...
Why the monthly fee?
Successful, legitimate businesses make their money from product or service sales, not from charging their salespeople for the right to make the company money.
Pyramid schemes, on the other hand, charge fees to join and you depend on recruiting others to make back your money.
I'm not at all impressed with the mentoring aspect - hired guns are easy to come by, if you pay them. I'd wager that anything they have to offer can be had for free by doing a little research; there are a lot of free sites that gladly share knowledge about publishing and writing from writers outside of the MLM field.

Oh, Julie, I'm glad you jumped in here!

Hey, if you just want to see your name on the spine of a book, or if you seriously want to self-publish, try Lulu - for FREE.

I swear, everybody wants a shortcut.

It all confuses me.

I wouldn't do it, but then I wouldn't do a lot of things. I'm a lousy capitalist. I'm just an artist. The middle man always gets all the money and that's just the system.

Oh well.

What can you do but get your happiness in life out of art and not money.

"(Robert) Allen is the author of the best-seller Multiple Streams of Income"

That told me all I need to know about it. The only people who get rich of of "how to get rich" books are the people selling them.

I found the source for their code phrase "enlightened" - One of Robert Allen's many business ventures is the Enlightened Wealth Institute. Not everyone feels that it's so enlightened. I wonder if the claim of being asked to speak to many businesses and corporations is founded in speaking to his own long list of businesses and corporations in the way that he's sold all those books and surely must know what he's talking about...
Except he sold them as part of other business investment packages for his other companies?

But hey, Robert G. Allen can make you a millionaire. No, wait, that was back in 2004. Now he runs a classy, enlightened book club.

I received the sales pitch letter in my G. box today and C&P'd it to MaryAnne with "spam and scam" in the subject line. I KNOW there's some TOS being violated with this scheme and I, for one, am offended at being targeted as a possible patsy by a "member" of G. If this "Authorwise" entity is allowed to continue pitching this scheme and maintains a presence here, it can only mean that management is complicit in the scam and making a buck from it. Another sign of the rot that lies at the core of this place. *barf*

I can tell you that Gather management has nothing to do with this. However, this is in no way different from all of the emails I get from people promoting their 'programs' and 'stuff,' I don't see why they would 'DO' anything.

To each his own-- and you are welcome to your opinion. Your choices will lead to your future and my choices will lead to my future and the appropriate thing to do here would be to adopt the 'to each his own' position. I don't judge you for doing what you do, although if you were to send me some information on something you think I might be interested in, I would have the courtesy to either 1) look into it and make an educated decision, or 2) say 'Thanks, but no thanks.'

It is an insult to the intelligence of other Gather members to think that they would need your 'uneducated' warning since they are incapable or too naive to look into it themselves.

My best wishes to you. May you find fulfillment of all your dreams, regardless of what they are---

From Gather TOS, Section 8:
"Gather also restricts the posting of overtly commercial content on or via the Services. Overtly commercial content is content the primary purpose of which is to sell a product or services or induces Members to enroll in a promotional or money-making enterprise that may or may not be legitimate in nature."
FYI, Shari G.

Thanks, Dame Ruth--- I did not send the email that started this discussion, have only been answering questions and have not posted anything that wasn't in response to other's misinformed comments and encouraged them to find out for themselves before they start slamming another person and their choices.

I certainly get a lot of emails and see a lot of posts encouraging me to enroll in money-making enterprises, though. I wonder what the difference is that makes them okay and this person's email NOT okay. Interesting---

Irrelevant to me-- I still say that a person ought to not pass judgment on something they do not have accurate information about.

I didn't get the spam [sniff :-(], but I'll take 2) 'Thanks, but no thanks.'

And Shari, "uninformed" would probably be an acceptable (albeit I suspect incorrect) word to describe J's warning to her friends here--"uneducated" is totally ridiculous.

Thanks, Aniko. I try to educate myself before committing time or money to anything.