Guaranteed book sales?

I was just looking at Innanis the Hooded: Adventures in Self Publishing Blogger Sean Froyd (a Bemidji ex-pat) is blogging to promote his book which was self published through Createspace. Createspace is an online press which allows you to print, market and sell through their site, or through your e-store, or through Amazon.

Sean says that Createspace competitor, Blurb is “basically a vanity press.” (see Making the Market) They “don’t allow you to set prices and you make nothing off the book” And I guess he’s right. Read Sean’s blog entry for more on his experience with self publishing, with Print on Demand, and with selling his book. You might want to buy it.

And then there’s Lulu which is yet another personal press which allows you to sell and make a profit. Lulu may be fine but some things you need to look at twice.

Lulu offers a “guaranteed number of clicks” which you can buy Clicks (someone clicking on your page with your book, but not necessarily reading the content) which will “generate a flood of potential customers” and 30 clicks for only $45! Imagine! Now how stupid do you have to be to buy that?

How does anyone guarantee that your web site or e-store is getting a certain amount of visitors? To my knowledge the only way Lulu can absolutely guarantee clicks from humans is to pay them. I wonder if they are using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to buy the clicks. A warning here, don’t work for the Turk, you’ll make less money than you ever thought possible.