This is a great book, so why four really bad reviews out of forty?
At first glance that's about what the ratio seemed for this book. I've been called a picky buyer, but I prefer to say that I try to be a careful one. So I had to *really* think about this one, since the nay sayers are rather harsh and the ones who rated high didn't seem nearly as vocal. Even if the “good” reviews outnumbered the others. Based on that first impression, statistically this book had a 90% chance of being a good buy. But upon further digging (clicking really) at the date of writing this, there were 6 bad reviews (Amazon says twelve critical, but “A little more detailed than I needed” doesn't qualify as critical to me). What some of the not so good (and somewhat disparaging) reviews said rang strongly in my mind and really made me almost not buy it. But some of the good reviews really pushed me the other way. I wanted to buy this book for two reasons and this book address them. First I wanted to learn the proper way of making soap(s) and the other reason is that the idea of starting a home-based business fascinates me, soap or otherwise. Most “good” reviews agreed that this was a good beginner book and that it fell right into what I was looking for, so what the heck, I went for it. One might say my common sense prevailed, but honestly? I figured that the majority is the majority for a reason and at less than five dollars, I didn't have much to lose. After reading the entire book, I came to my own conclusions about some of the more critical reviews, and since this book's rating seems to be affected by them (I don't want to say heavily, but the top review isn't nice and a single 1 star review is marked as 17%), I decided it would be a good way to show my support by writing in. Some critical reviews were just plain not true. Some were. For both, I can understand why from their points of view it was true for them. This book does certainly have a grandiose sounding title that could be taken many different ways, but I'd say it's based on how the author's own experience *was* to have indeed gotten to a six figure business from home. It's also true that there aren't an extraordinary amount of recipes in the book and that they are simple, I have to assert here that there *are* more than just two, but either way, the author herself says she adds them as a starting point and that the “fun” of soaps is to experiment and find what is the best combination for yourself. I agree, it sounds much more beneficial to create my own recipes and find what works best for my needs than instead of following what everyone else makes. That's what the internet is for. That said, the author herself says she thinks that soap making is easy and that all it takes is the basic knowledge and then practice. I personally suspect the recipes are there only for that very practice she wants to encourage. I respect that this author sticks her theory that you gotta know the basics and that's it. If you wanted an exhaustive guide with thousands of complex recipes then this paradigm would indeed be in direct opposition. Overall, I think the author took an honest approach to teaching two things in the book and she succeeded in doing what she set out to do. This book didn't promise to be a recipe book or a master guide to creating business conglomerates. It's about making and selling soaps from home. She did it and she's sharing her experience, that's all. It's to help start your own journey, not copy hers. She takes us through the basics, and explains the components, which *is* boring if you're not into details, I'll grant you that, but I found it very interesting as I was completely in the dark about almost all of it. Also, if the business part of the book is perceived as short (I will agree that the soap making part is larger) I still think the business part of the book covered what I needed to know to start a home-based business, it not only told me about some common sense basics like needing accounting, but also things I hadn't ever contemplated like FDA guidelines for soap labels. I'd recommend this book to people like me who are curious about making soap. Sorry, but I really believe this is a great beginner book. I'm a beginner myself and it sounded just right to me. I haven't tried making any yet, but at least on an information level it left me quite satisfied. I definitely recommend this book if you want to learn about making soap, its components, processes and ingredients, and I'd also recommend it if you already know something about making soap and you think you might want to turn it into a home business. This can help steer you the right way. If you are a professional at making soaps, or you are looking for a book to make your business plan down to the minutest of details, then you should probably look elsewhere. Read more