After many years of trying to set personal goals in various ways and then failing to stick to them, I’m finally having some success. I can’t claim all the credit for this. To get from someone who has never been able to be consistent at anything, to someone who appears to be making the [...]
I’m always trying to cut through advertising, to work out if something is really going to be useful to me. I wanted to present an insight into how I do that based on a recent book release. I know a lot of parents think that the answer to their problems is in something that they need to pay for , I don’t believe that’s true (unless it’s medical in nature) but the advertisers want us to believe it.
Whale Done Parenting: How to Make Parenting a Positive Experience for You and Your Kids
It was written by the team behind Whale Done! : The Power of Positive Relationships
I’ve always been aware of the fact that many self help books have something in common: they can be designed to generate lots of money for very little author effort. That’s particularly true for management books and parenting books. There are nearly 120,000 parenting books on Amazon and almost a million on management. The sheer volume tells you how easy it is to pump out the content and you can expect that a certain amount of recycling is needed to keep those topics alive.
As well as the probable recycling of content this looks to also be recycling the concept. The Whale in the title is supposed to indicate the fact that if positive reinforcement (amongst other related techniques) can get killer whales kissing their trainers they can be used to get (insert anyone here) doing what you want. In Whale Done it was staff, in Whale Done Parenting it’s kids.
So if we add that up, we have a book which appears to be recycling both content and concept, describing the fact that positive reinforcement, with an analogy to animal training, works well as a training tool for children.
Strike one for me is that I personally find the idea that animal training is analogous to parenting pretty offensive. That might not be the idea behind the book but it’s the idea behind the title and that puts me off.
Strike two is that this feels designed to sell, as opposed to designed to help. Catchy title, low price point, lots of mention about how the authors are previous best sellers. They’re using authority, legitimacy, value and reputation to influence my buying habits. I don’t blame them but I can see right through it. Although that would be the publishers not the authors.
Strike three is that even though it’s cheap it feels like a cheaper book to write. I have to question the value of it. Take away the analogy and how many original ideas are presented in the book? Am I getting much for my 11USD? I’m not convinced.
And they’re out. For me at least.
That’s basically how I try to cut through the endless parenting noise on the book shelves: do I like the concept? is there spin involved or is it of genuine value? how much effort went into creating it?
To be fair to the authors, and I do want to be fair because this is a review of the marketing and the concept, not the writing, parents who lack an understanding of the value of positive reinforcement would probably find this to be as good a book as any. For managers who need the same check out the other two books I mentioned. But for me it’s a no thanks.
Obviously I decided not to buy Whale Done Parenting, but if I ever get given it I promise to write a review as a balance to this article, it would be interesting to see if I’m right.
Tags: advertising, books, Parenting, shopping