BookWise the multi-level marketing (aka pyramid scheme) / book-club founded by Richard Paul Evans has failed.
Once touted by Evans as "the most intelligent home-based business in the world" BookWise has now merged with another multi-level marketing company iLearningGlobal, "a revolutionary success mentoring company, utilizing the power of online learning with an incredible compensation plan, higher payout and international opportunities."
In an email sent to BookWise members Evans says of the demise:
A couple months ago I learned a life changing lesson. I asked a billionaire friend of mine how do you know when it's time to quit. His reply sent chills down my back. He said, "I've never thought of winning in that way. Winning is really a matter of battles and wars. When it's prudent you change battlefields. BUT YOU NEVER QUIT THE WAR."
The BookWise war, or revolution, is about changing lives around the world by enabling people to dramatically improve their minds and finances. Unfortunately the BookWise battlefield isn't growing. There have been too many changes. Even though most of them have been positive, change is difficult and our Associates have lost faith. When you lose faith you can't succeed. It's time to quit the battle but not the war. We've found a remarkable solution.
Using war metaphors to explain a book-based business tells us how far off Evans is in understanding of book culture.
Book Patrol first covered this shady company back in March 2007. The post was titled "BookWise: The Book Worlds First Pyramid Scheme." and was followed in February 2008, after much negative feedback from the BookWise loyalists, with "BookWise: Book Club or Book Cult"
Evans and company are not totally out of the book world yet. If you go to BookWise you are redirected to WriteWise where for about $7000 they will help you become a best selling author!
Here is what you get:
- 3-day intense Boot Camp*
- Guided BEA (Book Expo America) field trip*
- A Guaranteed introduction to an Agent and/or publisher.
- Endorsement from a New York Times bestselling author.
- A Foreword from a New York Times bestselling author.
- Lifetime Admission to the WriteWise Annual National Writer´s Conference.
- Photograph with Robert G. Allen and/or Richard Paul Evans
- WriteWise mentoring telecourses, an intense and impressive series of live training sessions (recorded for later review) with weekly teleconference help sessions where you can ask WriteWise faculty experts your individual questions.
That's a far cry from the new HarperCollins literary community authonomy where writers can post their work for free and garner wider exposure. Of course, you don't get the photo with Robert G. Allen and/or Richard Paul Evans but if you're good you'll have a much better chance at getting published.
If you're a writer, which one would you choose?
1 comments:
Writing and reading and -- by association -- books, are processes, not wars. Books give to and demand from the writer in the writing; they give to and demand from the reader in the reading.
Richard Paul Evans has it exactly wrong. It's not a war. It's not a battle.
It is faithfulness in carrying out small tasks on a daily basis -- our habits, our duties, our actions in the weave of the tapestry of our lives. Books enrich our lives; they provide meaning; they provide a link with the past; they provide hope for the future. They are a measure of our culture and a vast continual font of learning. And they are demanding. They demand from the writer a commitment to writing the best possible work. They demand from the reader understanding, and perhaps, action. There is a price and it is not monetary.
Richard Paul Evans has in some fashion diminished the purpose and role of books in our lives to a single petty concept: a conflict in which winning money is paramount. He has taken the best part of the book, the real part, and trivialized it, hawked it like a carnival barker to those foolish enough to believe him.
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