Tim Castleman has been in Internet marketing for only three years, and already has a huge online following as a trainer. When Tim recently saw a dramatic change in a friend from reading “Awaken the Giant Within,” by Anthony Robbins he made a trip to Barnes and Noble to get a copy only to find the price to be $25.  So he began looking at options, e.g., the Kindle price was $13.99, yet he could buy an actual copy of the book from Amazon for about $8.

The reason for this that Amazon has been taken hostage by the Kindle publishing community.  In a countermove by Amazon, Hagens Berman, a Seattle-based law firm, recently brought suit against Apple and publishers Hachette, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, HarperCollins and Penguin for allegedly conspiring to adopt the “agency model” for Kindle book pricing.  Hagens Berman claims this keeps online prices high, and has forced Amazon to raise it’s online prices.

Another problem that Tim had was that Awaken the Giant “weighs in” at almost 600 pages.  This is longer than he really feels he has time to read.  So his search became more complex.  What he wanted was an electronic copy of the book that was actually shorter than the original.  What he found was Summary: Awaken the Giant Within – Anthony Robbins, by Must Read Summaries for $6.39.  A lightbulb not only went off, but “exploded” for him.

What if he could use Amazon’s misfortune to make a fortune?  What if you could find a popular, best selling book in the Kindle marketplace and create or outsource book summaries for profit?  Tim disclaims any knowledge of the legal ramifications (and didn’t sleep in a Holiday Inn recently), but he did hire an intellectual property expert who stated:  “The most important factor in determining whether or not a book summary is a copyright violation is the amount of actual material you take from the original book.  ‘Material,’ though is NOT ideas, concepts, or even events.” 

It is interesting that the iBook marketplace on iTunes currently has many summaries of popular books available today, with seeminly no issue.  Wouldn’t Apple be the first to object, if this practice was somehow illegal?  On the other hand, if it is legal, what is Tim’s suggested process to leverage this from a business perspective?

• Step 1 – Find popular titles in the kindle marketplace.  Under Kindle Books, choose best sellers and non-fiction/advice or how-to books that are at least 300 pages and price-fixed (price was set by the publisher).  There are several billion dollar industries within these categories.
• Step 2 – Find summary book authors and stalk them, in order to find out the company’s methods and possible talent to leverage.  Tim has already completed much of the necessary research.
• Step 3 – Create book summaries and publish.  Tim suggests pricing at least half off the original book.

Of course, Tim offers a live training course to fill in the details, taking anyone from ground zero to published author in no more than 30 minutes per day.  His step-by-step Kindle Celebrity Training not only teaches how to produce content on your own, but how to outsource efficiently and effectively.

Related articles

• Amazon Under Siege (mikecanex.wordpress.com)
• How to Publish your Amazon Kindle e-book (It’s easier than you think!) (drsaraheaton.wordpress.com)
• Over 1 in 5 Internet consumers own a Kindle says Citi survey (teleread.com)