Evil Stick Man:
How to make a fortune from e-books

Since the launch of Delayed Gratification in January 2011, a Machiavellian doodle known simply as Evil Stick Man has shared his devious get-rich-quick schemes with readers in each issue.

When the Man Booker Prize longlist was announced in July 2015, Evil Stick Man worked out an easier way to become a bestselling – and extraordinarily wealthy – author. Note: we do not condone his unscrupulous behaviour.

This edition of Evil Stick Man appeared in issue #20 of Delayed Gratification, which is available in our shop. For a lucrative compendium of stick man skulduggery, invest in our new book ‘How to be evil‘.

1 Use online trend engines to see which subjects are getting significant traffic online. Sports stars, pop stars, financial schemes, addictive substances… Anything or anyone is fair game.

2 Find your subject on Wikipedia and copy and paste the text, along with the text from all linked pages, into an e-book template. Call your book something like: ‘The Naked, Jaw-Dropping Truth Behind X by the Only Person Who Knows’

3 Invent an authorial persona that the reader can relate to. If the book is on addiction, be a recovering addict; if the subject is a celebrity, be an “insider”. Publish your e-book in multiple e-book marketplaces at the lowest possible price.

4 Pay a “review plumping” service to download multiple copies of your book and add five star reviews to each of the e-book sites as a verified purchaser.

5 Watch your book rise to the top of the best-reviewed list within its subject category. Add the words “Number 1 best-seller” to the front cover and raise the price.

6 Report any bad reviews of your copy-and-paste book as “abuse”, to get them masked from the general public.

7 Run your book through a free online translation service and publish revised editions in all major languages.

8 Receive royalties from each sale of each book across the multiple marketplaces. Repeat steps 1 to 7 until you are barred from all marketplaces.

9 You are now rich. Pay a team of journalists to print your most evil deeds in a book. Sell it online as a jolly gift.

Posted on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2016 - Categories: Delayed Gratification magazine, Evil Stick Man, Extras.