by Bartending : Memoirs of an Apple Genius promises to give an insiders look as to what life is like behind the glass panelled buildings of Apple from the perspective of Stephen, an ex genius bar apple staffer, who’s written a book on working the front line. I’m taking a sneak peek at a few chapters now and it’s an insightful look. There’s not much more I can say yet as I’m under NDA till release date of the 10th April. Good news everyone the NDA has been lifted so discussion is now allowed.
The book starts off immediately answering some of the most common questions people wonder what it’s like working at Apple.
When Apple Store shows up on your resume people often asked the same questions.
Did you get free stuff?
Did you know about products before they were announced?
Did you ever get any more from Steve?
To which the book answers; “The truth is that selling computers at the Apple Store isn’t that much different from selling them anywhere else but it is better.”
[pullquote_left]..”surprise and delight experience”[/pullquote_left]Some might feel this is somewhat anticlimactic but this isn’t a book aimed at telling you about the secret inner workings at the Apple stores. If you are looking to find out internal procedures, policies and how they monitor everyone when you walk into an Apple store then keep looking however you would be missing out on something.
What this book is, as stated in the title, is a look at the daily life of a Apple Genius Bar Staffer, working with the public and the trials and tribulations of having to work with the public.
It’s more a book of anecdotes of working on the other side of the glass panelled stores with a “lessons learnt” at the end of each chapter. There are a few glimpses of how Cupidtino occasionally allows a “surprise and delight experience nestled in amongst some genuine emotional tales of how truly horrific data loss can be for some people on at emotional level. I mean, imagine the loss if your pictures had been of loved ones who passed away in a car crash as an example.
“The Apple Store is the place where those experiences are made far better or far worse. Being on the front lines means gathering some great war stories. Stephen is here to share a few of his.”
Overall
It’s a light reading book done in a style telling the story from the front line with a lessons learnt and observation note at the end. You don’t have to know all things Apple to enjoy the book but a cursory interest in the product line does help enjoyment along. For those that work in a similar from line environment, such as myself, you’ll find yourself nodding at the shared experience from the front line.
A cracking little read which is my only real complaint. Coming in at 47 pages it was easy to blast through the book in an afternoon which is no small feat seeing as I rarely read anything but internet pages. That being said the size is reflected in the price.
Bartending: Memoirs of an Apple Genius is released on Tuesday, April 10, available for the Amazon Kindle £3.23 at the time of posting and as also available as an ePub. Amazon.com shows the pricing at $5.25 at the time of publishing.
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At $8.99 the size is not reflected in the price. If that was the case this book would cost $2.99 max. As it is, you are paying about 19 cents per page, which is excessive. What you are getting is an extremely short, and not particularly revealing, series of 2-3 page anecdotes about the author’s days as an Apple store Genius. It’s not a revealing tell-all, and frankly as much as I wanted to enjoy it I honestly found it pretty dull.
The author is overcharging for this book and aside from the “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” peer reviews listing this as a must read, I think the majority will find it seriously overpriced and vaguely interesting at best. Of course there will be those who tout this as the best bing they’ve ever read, but I won’t count myself among them.
Having purchased and read the book, I’d recommend avoiding it until the author drops the price to a realistic level. It’s simply not worth the price charged.
Hi Anthony.
The price has been changed and the author has emailed to say that it’s settled down now on the amazon store. I did say to check around for the best pricing at the bottom of the article.
I’m like you, I was hoping for an insider book on how things work but I still enjoyed it anyhow. Horses for courses on that.
Finally I NEVER do back scratching reviews period! True most of the stuff reviewed here is genuinely liked and believe me I go through a lot of rubbish to get to a point where something is worth while enough to write about. If its truly, truly awful then I will post to stop people making the same mistake I made on some software 😀
Thanks for taking the time to post here.
Hello Mark,
Thanks for responding. Sorry, I didn’t mean to infer that you were doing the back scratching reviews as that wasn’t my intent. I was referring to some of the other single person tech blogs out there who were absolutely gushing over the book and flagging it as a “must read” for any true Apple fan. Obviously they are entitled to their opinion and it is likely genuine, but these guys are also a pretty tight knit community so helping each other out is likely par for the course.
I noticed after I posted that the price of the book has now dropped to $4.99 so the author has obviously heard the comments. While this price is better I feel it’s still a bit high considering the brevity of the book.
That was my main issue after purchasing, I opened it in iBooks and saw “Page 1 of 47” and thought “that’s all?”. Instead of feeling that I got a decent, if not somewhat brief, read for a reasonable price, I felt like I had paid too much and received too little.
At the end of the day, $8.99 isn’t a huge amount of money. It’s less than 2 fancy coffees at Starbucks. However, I think it behooves anyone selling self-published content online to gauge the price according to the amount of content being provided, and in this way I think Bartending falls flat.
No worries. I didn’t think you were being off. I do agree with some of your feedback but at least the author has responded and brought the price down to be a tad more reasonable