Showing posts with label copywriting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label copywriting. Show all posts

Sunday, August 10, 2014

How to Write Ads That Get the Sale! - A New Binder...

Just Released: Robert Collier, Eugene M. Schwartz, and Victor O. Schwab now tell you their secrets...

New Collection of Copywriting Secrets by Robert Collier, Eugene Schwartz, and Victor O. Schwab just released!


I thought I was all done, after months of researching and editing and sweating over these old, out-of-print books – bringing these age-old truths back into print.

Then I saw that there was one more collection which needed to be created.

While the Masters of Marketing Secrets series had already been mined for the history of Advertising, and Salesmanship classics, I still hadn't told anyone which were the key books out of that dozen which held the core datums where a person could learn the “rainmaking” skill of copywriting.

That was how this series started. Looking up someone who was as much an “accidental” millionaire as he had any other reason for getting rich, he mentioned that in order to start a home business, you had to have a “rainmaking” skill – something which would bring in the sales.

It turns out they had it partially right – much like the rest of their “home business” advice. (Did I mention he was an “accidental” millionaire?)

Anyway, it turned out to be more than he imagined. That guy learned from some real jokers in the deck. Thought being a “market leader” was being arrogant. That isn't what the real marketers ever said, only some Johnie-come-lately wannabe's.

The real copywriters spoke to people – as close to one-on-one is as possible with direct mail or classified ads. People like Joe Sugarman, Bob Bly, and Eugene Schwartz were the most recent users and evangelists of this real-world approach to selling things.

A little more research uncovered the true mentors who had laid this out at the turn of the last century.
What they said then still hold true – because humankind hasn't really changed much in the last 10,000 years.

Those few books broadened out to a dozen. All from people who had tested and proved the principles as basic, and applicable to any and all marketing and sales.

From this book series, I've created this collection which specifically selected only the books which deal best with copywriting itself. The other two collections which preceded this dealt with the evolution of advertising itself, and defined salesmanship in a low-pressure scenario, which is becoming more the way online sales has trended. (In fact, you'll get banned on various sites if you try anything else...)

This collection is bringing you the best and brightest of copywriting experts – so you can learn first-hand what it is that is required to get sales from every ad you write.

For that is the test of good copywriting – it gets the sale.

Get Your Copy Today!
Now on Amazon and everywhere else as well:



http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/isbn9781312403574
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MERYPJE

Trade paperback (6"x9", 442 pages) available on Lulu and soon on Amazon and all brick-and-mortar bookstores:

Support independent publishing: Buy this book on Lulu.

Saturday, August 2, 2014

How Great Books Get Forgotten

Why these books are Public Domain and yet under my own copyright.

How to keep classic texts available for our chidlren - republish public domain books.


It's sad, but a feature of our times that the deluge of information is making books disappear. And yet, when a book is really good, it keeps showing up.

I created this series from research into copywriting as a subject. Two copywriting legends, Eugene Schwartz and Gary Halbert gave short lists of the people they studied to get their success. If you cross-compare these lists, you'll find the bulk of them are now in the public domain and available for anyone to republish.

The reason I've republished them is to keep them in circulation. The reason they are under my own copyright now, is to protect the original work I've put into them and to as well get some return for the time spent editing, correcting OCR errors, and formatting for easy reading as ebooks.

This page is assembled to have one single page where I can give the links showing the legal copyright status of these books.

As possible I tried also give the link where you can download your own version if you want - for free. (Some of these take some sleuthing-out.) Realize that while the folks at Gutenburg, Google, and other public domain patrons do a great job in converting these to digital, the adage "you get what you pay for" can be readily proven with free books versus the added-value reproductions.

Below this list, there is a discussion of what makes a public domain book newly copyrightable.
Search for renewed copyrights is done on Stanford's system.

The books in this Masters of Marketing Secrets series: 

Breezy by J. George Frederick (d. 1964)
Breakthrough Advertising (Eugene Schwartz' Breakthrough Advertising Review Notes) by Eugene Schwartz (d. 1995)
Selling Things (Part of "How to Sell Without 'Selling'") by Orison Swett Marden (d. 1924)
Successful Low Pressure Salesmanship (Part of "How to Sell Without 'Selling'") by Edward Berman (d. 1989)
How to Write a Good Ad(vertisement) by Victor O. Schwab (d. 1980)
Masters of Advertising Copy: principles and practice of copy writing according to its leading practitioners (How to Write Ad Copy That Works) by J. George Frederick (d. 1964)
My Life in Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins (d. 1932)
Obvious Adams by Robert R. Updegraff (d. 1977)
The Robert Collier Letter Book (The Robert Collier Copywriting Course) by Robert Collier (d. 1950)
Scientific Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins (d. 1932)
Tested Sentences that Sell by Elmer Wheeler (d. 1968)
The Lasker Story (The Untold Story Behind Advertising) by Albert Lasker (d. 1952)
Intensive Advertising (The What, How, and Why of Advertising) by John E. Kennedy
Reason Why Advertising (The What, How, and Why of Advertising) by John E. Kennedy

Copyright law and the public domain

The whole point of copyright law is to protect property (and commerce) rights of individuals and corporations. A very lengthy description of copyright law is found on Wikipedia. Once this right has expired, these books fall into the public domain. At that point, anyone can republish them in whole, or base new works on them as derivative works.

One of my main applications is to create new derivative works in new arrangements as compilations. These compiled books, composed of several public domain books, are then my copyright - even though the individual books remain in the public domain.

The U.S. Copyright Office says it this way:
The copyright in a compilation of data extends only to the selection, coordination or arrangement of the materials or data, but not to the data itself. In the case of a collective work containing “preexisting works”—works that were previously published, previously registered, or in the public domain— the registration will only extend to the selection, coordination or arrangement of those works, not to the preexisting works themselves.
The point of such compiled books is to enable people to easily find and read collections of material which are otherwise unavailable. I've done the work of researching and finding these books and also verifying that they are in the public domain.  As well, they have been extensively edited and formatted, but just proofing a book itself doesn't mean you get a new copyright on it. You have to do substantial work to make it a true derivative work.

While most of the books I've re-published have fallen out of copyright (pre-1923) or never renewed prior to 1964, some have run their original 28 years and are now in the public domain. Please study copyright laws for yourself, using the links above. There are several good sites which explain these laws and their changes more simply.

There are orphans, where the copyright is being violated with impunity as simply no one cares. And others, like Claude M. Bristol's Magic of Believing, were renewed under questionable circumstances (by the author, about 21 years after he died.)

Note: Wikipedia points out that anything published after 1964 won't be in the public domain for quite awhile (one exception being those works published before 1976 with no copyright notice):
Copyright renewal has largely lost its significance for works copyrighted in the US in 1964 or after due to the Copyright Renewal Act of 1992. This law removed the requirement that a second term of copyright protection is contingent on a renewal registration. The effect was that any work copyrighted in the US in 1964 or after had a copyright term of 75 years, whether or not a formal copyright renewal was filed... A further amendment to US copyright law in 1998 extended the total term of protection to 95 years, which now applies to all works copyrighted in 1964 or after.
So a book published in 1964 will be public domain in the U.S in at least 95 years after original copyright, or when the author died, whichever happened last. (That's 2059, at least.) Meanwhile, you'll be able to publish in foreign countries as much as 25 years earlier - or 2034.) That questionable Bristol work is definitely public domain in 2018 in the U.S. and 2021 in foreign countries.

All of this is to bring you up to speed that you can safely use this above list of books as you want. I've done the hard work and research to make them available once again - and perhaps we won't see these genius classics disappearing anytime soon.

Note1: Most foreign copyrights are lifetime of the author plus 70 years. You can publish in the U.S. but not have the same rights in many foreign countries. The U.S. is a signatory on the copyright convention, so a foreign author'e heirs have rights against your republishing that book in the U.S. There's a legal grey area where the book was published in the U.S. and not renewed here, even though the same book is still under copyright overseas.

Note2: Amazon is sticky, very sticky about these issues for their Kindle. Anally so. Best is to not claim foreign rights just because it's PD in the U.S. Even so, you're going to have to shepherd these books through, proving their PD status - and even then, unless it's "annotated," "illustrated," or "translated" is may not be accepted - or simply blocked with no recourse. Meanwhile, Lulu is not so sticky. Publishing a hardcopy version on Lulu with their "extended reach" will get that hardcopy book sold on Amazon and everywhere else, when you can't get it through their Kindle approval process.

Sunday, June 1, 2014

The Marketing Books You've Always Wanted Are On Their Way...

Update: Masters of Marketing Secrets Series now published as trade paperbacks.

Masters of Marketing Secrets Series now available in paperback from major retailers.


It's taken some work, which started late last year, just to get these books to you. I've just completed the proofing last night and these are enroute to Amazon, Ingrams, and other retail distributors so you can have hardcopy as well as ebook versions.

You're welcome.

Go ahead and ask your local bookstore to order you a copy. They're published by Lulu, so they should be welcome about anywhere that Indie Authors are sold. For now, the links below go to Lulu, who will print up your own personal version when you order them:


Additional ebook-only books in this series:



I've still got some work to get all the ebook versions actually showing up on iTunes, Nook, and Amazon - but they're coming. Google Play and Kobo have had them for some time, as well as Lulu proper. (See the individual sales pages for links.)

These will be followed by publishing to LeanPub, where you'll be able to get bundles of these books, and perhaps packages with special extras I have "leftover on the cutting room floor."

What's Next?

Despite my best intentions and planning, I've started writing a review of  Eugene Schwartz' Breakthrough Advertising - so there's some access to this data. Each of these Masters of Marketing Secrets books is intended to come out as a free email ecourse. But due to copyright restrictions, I wasn't able to reproduce Schwartz' book straight across - so a review helps everyone out.

Plus, it's part of the reason I took this study up - to learn from the Masters. Editing and proofing these for you is just part of the journey.

OK, it's back to the grindstone for me.

Have fun with this.

More coming.
Enhanced by Zemanta

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Masters of Marketing About to Debut

Watch This Space

Soon, we'll be bringing you the true classics from the Masters of Marketing. Each will initially be just the ebook and perhaps hardcopy edition of these books as they've been rescued from the dustbins of history.

Later, look for ecourses and packages so you can learn from the true legends of copywriting and advertising - from their own words.

This is simply an announcement to let you know something is coming.

Stay tuned.

PS. That means to use the opt-in forms and buttons on the upper right to subscribe anyway you want...
Enhanced by Zemanta