A business mentor of mine once gave me this wisdom: The best selling diet books don't contain the best diet advice. The best selling dating books don't contai

A business mentor of mine once gave me this wisdom: The best selling diet books don't contain the best diet advice. The best selling dating books don't contain the best dating advice. The best selling business books don't contain the best business advice. I think this is logical, to some extent, i.e.: Advice books are optimised for excitement and the illusion of inspiration. Because results take a long time to demonstrate, massive aggregate data, and the elimination of countless other factors, nobody can possibly work out whether the advice in a book is any good before they buy it. Instead they look to reviews, which are based on enjoyment and inspiration. Someone will read it, and coincidentally find success, and you have your testimonial. Someone will read it, and fail, and nobody will know. So to make your book sell, the quality of the advice is mostly irrelevant, it is the engagement that makes the sale. Exciting truisms and unfalsifiable chattiness sell advice books, not good advice. Reading advice books 'just in case' you come across good advice, is like reading a string of random numbers 'just in case' you come across the lottery results. Personally I'm a bit less sceptical, but only a very small bit.