I look for readability and – in the case of one where the person is professing to be an expert of some kind – what their credentials are and what others who have read it seem to think of both the writing and the advice.

A poorly written book to me – particularly in the business world (where I would categorize something dealing with finance) – would signal an unorganized thinker. His/her results would not be considered typical or reproducible (which is what I think you’re going for, Adrian, to create the “process” and thereby prove that your resuts are reproducible under some set conditions, which hopefully are fairly typical or achievable by most people, or at least most of your target audience, which may be a select part of the population.

I agree about $49.99 for 5 pages. Even 5 pages may make some feel that they have been gypped (i.e., cheated), needing more details to feel that they have spent their time (=money) well.

There is another blog – written by the “well-fed writer” himself, who comes from the marketing/publicity side of business and apparently has the ability to make a living writing. He has an interesting story (and wrote some e-books to share what he did, too, for other writers to learn and follow). Here’s the link for his blog: http://www.wellfedwriter.com/blog/?p=31

The reader has no idea how great or … not great the writing of the book is until after they buy it. If it’s of reasonable quality – no one will complain as long as the content they’re after is there.