I am aware that YMMV. Honestly, I am the poster child for YMMV! However, the books I purchased were exactly a recipe that could be followed by anyone. That's what I did. That doesn't mean that everyone that tries to follow a recipe is an equally good cook, or that all those with the recipe follow it.
I'm not trying to convince you that self help books are all legit. All I know is my personal experience with the real estate books showed that those were.
Sadly, Dodd-Frank legislation wrongly ended lender's ability to fund the kinds of purchases and buyers that such books taught. This is a large part of why I have not done it again.
When I tried, the legal landscape involving private finance had changed a lot, and lenders that worked in the area were heavily regulated to prevent the poor from breaking out of their poverty, as I had in the past.
Presently, if you aren't availed of a high paying job and a good credit score, creative financing methods are limited to such personal acquaintances as you may have, because commercial sources have been eliminated from the market.
My friend, more than this I do not know.
People who are religious and survive car accidents claim that miracles are real. They go out and are describe how their ways saved them. Heck they even describe their vision just before the accident.
Do you know what the problem is?
The vast majority of christians that took the exact same steps did not survive to say "hey dude, it didn't work". You only hear the opinion from those who are alive.
same exact thing happens with self-help books.