Advertising Secrets of the Written Word: The Ultimate Resource on How to Write Powerful Advertising Copy from One of America's Top Copywriters and Mail Order Entrepreneurs

I bought this after reading somewhere else that ANOTHER one of Sugarman's staples was all wrapped up into this book anyway.I haven't even finished the whole thing but sheesh… studying the psychological triggers alone will give you so much freaking insight into ALL advertising!! You will be a nerd and lose 80% of your friends with how annoyingly observant you'll be.The book is also chock full of REAL examples.I'd say my favorite thing about Mr. Sugarman's writing is his really humble personality that comes through. He shares his experiences. He just tell you (so you can learn) where he went wrong in the past—where his ideas and campaigns made him "lose his shirt."I've learned a ton from this book. Add it to your copywriting library.

And that is what makes this book so good.Sugarman never did much writing for other people.He wrote to cover his payroll and build his ownbusiness - risking Millions of dollars a year,OF HIS OWN MONEY, to test his ideas.He confesses he lost more often than he won butwhen he wrote a winner he sometimes won big. Alongthe way he learned harsh truths about business.He's not only a gifted and original copywriter,he's a shrewd business strategist - Sugarmanpromoted electronic gimmicks and gadgets thatwould get severely devalued as new technology camealong, sometimes in a matter of months - so he'sparticularly relevant to writers and marketersin the "internet marketing" niches today, where thenovel and hypey often carries the day.I read Sugraman's ads when I was a kid and alsoDrew Kaplan's (when will that Masked Man writea book?) and was transfixed. Still later in Idiscovered J. Peterman's catalogs.I got started writing copy for my woodworking businessbefore I lost interest in the long hours and physicalgrind of production. Writing copy later became thekeystone to my success online - and Sugarman was thefirst copywriting "bible" I acquired.I wouldn't actually recommend this book as the first oneyou read - it's about marketing and the mail order businessas much as it is about psychology and copywriting... soit doesn't cover salesletter structure in a way that willbe useful to everybody just starting out... unless yousell gadgets like Sugarman did. I'm not saying he is nota master because he clearly is - just that there are otherbooks you might want to read first like Victor Schwab'sexcellent book.

You Need This Book- if you plan to stay in business in the comming years. With the DNC lists, and the various goverment entanglements; YOU NEED A EDGE STARTING TODAY.I was was showing this book (ok I lent it out) to a young business student last week. When it occurred to me what Claude Hopkins said almost 100 years ago; "advertising is salesmanship in print". You can have all the fancy java & activex web sites for your BtoB, BtoC, banding, CRM, mo...use, Mickey Mouse (sory I digress). What Joe Sugarman has distilled in print what Claude Hopkins did and wrote about about. Your customer is not a moron,("she's your wife" David Ogilvy) but very intellegent and will leave you in a New York nano-second if you treat them that way. With the explosion of the internet; only compounds the problem. You need to gain customers not one shot sales. Joe shows you how to understand them. You have to give the coustomer a compelling reason to buy from you again & again. If you as a direct marketer loose your focus on your customer you will end up like our retail brethren (Chapter 11 or a distant memory.so!" Yes Joe's book is simple. But haven't we all learned that simplicity works! Think About it.

Great copy looks so easy -- so simple, so effortless, so "ordinary." There are those who can take the process of writing it and make that process look complicated. And then there's Joe Sugarman.This is one of the two books I recommend for further study in my home-study "Money-Making Copywriting Course." Why? Because Joe cuts through all of the needless and cumbersome detail so many teachers of copywriting instill in their lessons. He makes the information accessible and entertaining to learn. And he's a super-successful real-world practioner, as well as a very skilled and effective teacher.A novice might think that because this book does not refer to Internet marketing or the latest trends in print and direct mail advertising, it is out of date. That is a well-intentioned but misguided criticism. Of course very few people know how to market effectively (and close sales) on the Internet. Since I have done this successfully (I've created Web sites that made lots of money, by themselves) and since I spent a year as the editor of a newsletter tracking who was successful marketing online and who wasn't (almost everyone wasn't), I can say with some authority that there are very few people who can market effectively online.But know this about Joe Sugarman. If he ever chose to do online marketing, he would make a fortune -- just as he has done before in other ventures. Why? Because there are certain principles of human nature, and of selling with the written word, that have not yet changed. And he is a world-class expert in conveying those principles to novices and experts alike.The technological and situational landscape may make it look like we live in a very different world, but trust me -- as someone who got a 2% response with direct mail at the height of the anthrax scare in the fall of 2001 -- the world we live in now is pretty much the same as the world we have always lived in.At least as it pertains to writing effective advertising copy.I can't recommend this book highly enough. You'll learn tons, and -- best of all -- you'll be able to make some very good money with what you learned.

Covers all the basics, the mindset and advanced strategies.I was recommended to read this my a top copywriter, and I suggest you read it too

This book has transformed my writing - absolutely no nonsense, well written and entertaining. I recommened this book if you are a writer of any form.

Learned some of the foundations of marketing and getting people's interest in general here!