Home » Self-Confessed ‘Contrepreneur’ Sells Completely Blank Book, Becomes A #1 Amazon Best-Seller

12 July, 2019

Self-Confessed ‘Contrepreneur’ Sells Completely Blank Book, Becomes A #1 Amazon Best-Seller

Would you ever buy a book from a man who describes himself as a contrepeneur?

If the answer is yes, then you probably grab yourself a copy of Mike Winnet’s 144-paged blank ‘novel’, titled ‘The Contrepreneur’s Guide: How to get a #1 Amazon best-seller’.

The British ‘demotivational speaker’ devised the scheme as a way to expose wannabe business gurus.

“Everyone’s an Amazon best-seller these days and contrepreneurs use it to establish authority, get speaking gigs and upsell you other products,” Winnet said in a video documenting the scheme.

It took him just over an hour to complete the gag.

“I couldn’t be arsed writing a proper book,” he said.

Instead, he knocked up a flashy cover, which included glowing (and very fake) testimonials, a reduced price sticker and a promise for readers to “make millions”.

The book was then uploaded to Amazon Direct Publishing, which allowed him to save on any upfront costs and instead only pay Amazon a royalty when someone ordered a copy.

It was here where he was able to effectively game Amazon’s best-selling list.

He ensured the book was uploaded into a very niche sub-category, in this case it was ‘Business Quality Management’.

“[This is] so you’re competing against boring, low-selling, sh*te books in the charts.”

Despite being told the book would first face a thorough review from Amazon, the title was live that same day.

To get to the top of a chart on Amazon, the book must be the top-seller for just one hour.

To achieve this, Winnet dropped the price from £7.97 ($AUD14.32) to £0.99 ($1.78) and pushed it on social media.

Sure enough, the flashy cover and bargain pricetag propelled The Contrepreneur’s Guide: How to get a #1 Amazon best-seller to #1 on the Business Quality Management list on Amazon, promising Northern hemisphere readers a “nice and short read for summer”.

Unsurprisingly, Amazon has since banned the book, which Winnet brags makes the book a “genuine limited edition”.

In total, 49 copies of the book were sold.

View this post on Instagram
No surprises. It EXPOSES how easy it is to become a bestseller and how bad #Amazon are at checking self-published books. – So now I am the proud owner of a BANNED #1 @amazon Best-Seller… which is probably cooler. – Well done to anyone that bought a paperback, they're a genuine limited edition now. – #TheContrepreneur
A post shared by Mike Winnet (@mikewinnet) on Jul 10, 2019 at 11:01am PDT

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