Ok, but if you're going to be reading a book about all this medical advice, wouldn't you hope it was by someone who spent more than a day on it? You can either want us to be impressed at her speed or at her thorough, exhaustive research. It can't be both (and it obviously can't be the latter).
I understand your point. The "do" advice is as simple as "drink 12 drops of this in 8 ounces of water 2 times a day. Do not use with 1 hour of taking any prescription medicine and talk to your doctor first."
The entire book comes down to that in terms of "do" advice. The "don't" advice is don't put it in your eyes, your ears, a nebulizer, or inject it. People have been blinded, made deaf, destroyed their health and died doing so in the past.
The book explains the theory of how it works - which then explains it's potential benefit and potential harms. She promises no cures. The rest is just chatter mostly about the importance of a good diet and eating healthy foods, healthy living and good mental perspectives, and basic vitamins and minerals - to ask their "healthcare advisor" which ones - which is advice retailers also will like. She vehemently warns against con-artists and frauds promising miracle cures on the Internet.
There is a time urgency and why the first run is only 10,000 copies. This allows a rewrite and editing.
It is replacing a popular book - in a raiding sense - for which that author has become arrogant and increasingly raised the wholesale price - to the point there is little profit left for retailers and other marketers.They want a replacement book, so she's writing one. Her company supplied probably 75% of both physical stores and online sellers in that product line - including such as Whole Foods, GNC, Vitamin World etc - often under their own private label. It is a niche market product. So this book is rushed so they have a quick replacement wholesale source for the book because they do not want to buy the now overpriced other book.
The book it is replacing also is lay written. The other book curses the FDA, AMA and doctors as criminal conspirators deliberately killing people - and claims a person only needs do this to cure basically every disease and illness - listing everything from cancer to HIV/AIDS - and thus a person no longer needs their doctor or prescriptions, and to use 75 drops 4 times a day. It gives no warnings.
My wife had tangled with that author over this, and with all such product she sold included in the instructions not to follow that other book's advise, doing the same on her websites. The alternative book she had instead offered was WAY over most people's head. So she instead had a website that on the label people could go to, plus label warnings.
The alternative health products market is the world of PT Barnums, people selling out of their homes and writing anything and everything to make a sale. There are tens of thousands of books and tens of thousands of products. Most actually do nothing. Some are beneficial. Some are harmful.
The subject/substance she is writing on does nothing in very low usage, may offer some benefits with moderate usage, and is very harmful in excessive usage. Anyway, that is the reason for the fast output. She can edit and improve it for the next run. She just needs to get some out now to capture that niche market - which she dominated for the product itself when in business so has the contact with the retailers. One, for example, sells about 200 per week. Others, 10 to 20. Most sell maybe 1 to 2 per week out of their book rack or off their website. Collectively, this lead to hundreds or thousands sold per week.
In this first run, she intends to capture the market for independent small retail stores. Having the book, she can then make corrections on an edit, have it printed and send a free sample to the larger retailers - particularly the big online sellers, plus retailing it herself via such as Amazon and a website for the book, plus offer affiliate sales - all which she knows how to do. Her and her partner were very skilled at targeting a competitor and blitzing them to take nearly all their business in a surprise attack. She needs to get a book on the topic, ANY book, available now to grab the small retailers who currently are pissed off at the other author.
Books like what she is writing are mostly about what I call chattering. The substance of the book that matters - do this and don't to that - probably could be reduced to 5 pages. Most books are like that.
The bibliography, which is real, is mostly just for looks for most people. However, there are legitimate professionals including doctors who engage in alternative methods including that substance. The bibliography demonstrates she's familiar with the topic.
This all tells me that she's going back into business, but in a much easier level from different directions. In the typical wholesale-retail mix, as she will do both, she'll make about $4.50 a book when retail sales of the book are considered in it. Hundreds a week is likely a certainty and thousands a week not impossible, particularly at first. But this is all in a marketing field she was in and knows (and is known in). She does not use her real name as there are nuts in the alternative health world.
I do understand your point, but this isn't a medical journal. It's just a book in an ocean of such books. It likely will do more good than harm. But, of course, mostly it is a business venture about making money. Even if the book is crap and no one buys another copy, she'd made about $30K for what will be about 60 hours work for her and our daughter when adding sending them out. That's a worse case result. Or she could sell a hundred thousand copies over the year. Time will tell.
There are people who write books like this in the alternative health market, knocking out about 1 every 2 months, as their profession. Few are written well and are just 99% chattering hype. She's not on a moral crusade. She seized on easy money.
