10 copywriting books from the trenches
Claude Hopkins, the greatest ad man who ever lived, was once asked to review some college textbooks on advertising and advise the publishers on how to improve them.
His advice?
Burn them!
Apparently, he told the publishers they had no right to mislead beginners and that by the time they’d read the books, it would take them years to get back to zero.
They were written by academics with no front-line, in-the-trenches experience, who had never put their own money on the line and tested their theories in the marketplace.
Here are 10 of my favourite copywriting resources - recommended by entrepreneurs (not college professors) - and actively applied in my own businesses:
- Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins
- The Eugene Schwartz Phillips Publishing speech
- John Carlton’s “Kickass Copywriting Secrets”
- The Gary Halbert Letter
- Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz
- No B.S. Direct Marketing for Non-Direct Marketing Businesses by Dan Kennedy
- “Look Over My Shoulder” newsletter by Dan Kennedy
- Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples
- Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got by Jay Abraham
- No B.S. Sales Success In The New Economy by Dan Kennedy
And one more bonus resource for the lavishing’s sake:
The advertising of companies that sell totally different, non-competitive products and services. This is a terrific source of ideas to steal and apply to your own marketing.
Most of your competitors rely on the same handful of approaches used by everyone else in your industry, so this is an easy way to differentiate yourself.
Most of these resources are dirt cheap…
Some are completely free…
… And, combined, they are better than a marketing degree!