Books like World's greatest direct mail sales letters by Herschell Gordon Lewis

Great book on how to become a skilled copywriter.

Explains how to write advertising copy for a mail order advertisement. The opening section covers the principles of copywriting including the graphic elements of an ad, the first sentence, and creating the perfect buying environment. Section two explains copy elements such as typeface, paragraph headings, and anticipating buyer objections, and psychological triggers such as honesty, credibility, value, and the desire to belong.

Lester Wunderman is an advertising legend, the pioneering father of direct marketing, to whom we owe the ubiquity of the American Express card, the creation of the Columbia Record Club, and the high profile of L.L. Bean. The visionary marketing techniques Wunderman conceived and perfected over his long and brilliant career transformed the advertising industry and will shape the interactive marketplace of the future. Here is his own story, in his own words, of how he did it - how he learned to make advertising pay. Direct marketing is a strategy for putting manufacturers directly in touch with consumers - the blueprint for the "disintermediation" of the digital world. Back in the fifties and sixties, while other ad agencies disdained what was then called mail-order selling, Lester Wunderman used his instincts and skills to revolutionize the industry. He was responsible for a number of firsts: He introduced bound-in subscription cards for magazines, founded the first "virtual store," introduced pre-printed newspaper inserts, and persuaded Time Inc. to use an 800 number to sell their magazines. Today, direct marketing accounts for 15 percent of all retail sales worldwide.