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Story of the Little Blue Books
Do you know how many
little blue books did Emanuel sell?
Once upon a time, in 1919 to be exact, 30 year old Emanuel thought of an idea. Why not repackage classic literature and sell it to the masses in cheap paperback format?
And so, with his wife Marcet, Emanuel started a printing house in Girard, Kansas. And started printing "People's Pocket Series" books on cheap pulp paper. These classics were printed in little 3.5 by 5 inch books bounded with blue covers. And were sold at 5 cents a book.
Later on, Emanuel also started publishing socialist and radical thought books. And changed the name of series to "Little Blue Books" to match their covers.
You know how many copies of these little blue books did Emanuel sell?
A Hundred Million!
Even though each book was just sold at 5 cents, a 100 million 5 cents do add up! So how did Emanuel sell so many books? He made it a condition that people had to buy at least 20 books with every order. (This had a sneaky advantage of people ordering 1-2 taboo books with 18 others.)
Emanuel advertised the books through newspapers. But he only used the book titles in advertisements. No copy. No benefits. Just the titles of dozens of his books that people could buy in bundles of 20. Which meant that the title of his books had to be top notch.
If a book didn't pull in enough orders, Emanuel would send it to "the hospital" and change its title. And a change in title would sometimes triple and quadruple the sales.
Some examples:
- When Oscar Wilde's "Pen, Pencil and Poison" was changed to "The Story of a Notorious Criminal", it tripled the sales.
- When "Fleece of Gold" was changed to "The Quest for a Blonde Mistress" - sales increased 8-fold!
- Sales of "Patent Medicine" were troublesome. But "The Truth about Patent Medicine" revived that book by more than tripling the sales!
Its a classic. And every direct marketer would give an arm and a leg for a copy of that book.
(Read what legendary copywriter Gary Halbert has to say about the book: "Read a copy of The First Hundred Million! It is where I learned my magic words... the ones that make copy SIZZLE and my headlines impossible to ignore.")
I checked onto amazon.com and found that a used copy is going for $1600 <gasp> !
Click to enlarge
or go to amazon.com
Did some googline and came upon someone selling the book for $49.95. If you want to buy the book, head over to Marketing Classics.
For more book recommendations that can improve your marketing skills - especially direct marketing skills, read this post by my friend and marketing headhunter Harry Joiner.
Action Summary:
If a product doesn't sell well, try changing its name. A good name can easily double the response rate.
- Read "First Hundred Million" by E. Haldeman-Julius to learn to write better headlines.
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