The Robert Collier Letter Book 1st Edition

This version has serious typographical errors which make reading very difficult.Either order directly from Robert Collier Publications or search Amazon for the following ISBNs:ISBN: 0912576200 orISBN-13: 9780912576206

Many of the copywriting greats cite this book as one of maybe three foundational, wellspring, headwaters books for the entire industry of direct mail, and probably direct response marketing itself. I have heard Dan Kennedy talk endlessly about him. Gary Halbert puts this book in the first three of his recommended reading (and hand-copying) for aspiring copywriters, and none other than Yanik Silver has put a review of this book on this page. (If you don't know who Yanik Silver is, look him up. He's one of the most successful direct response copywriters working today.)So what should you expect when reading this book?Gary Halbert makes the point repeatedly, in different ways and places, that if your message is true, and good, and contains real value, then you don't need to obsess about the 'quality' of your medium to convey that message. He says essentially "If some guy hands you a crumpled up note that he pulled out of his pocket, and on it it says 'Your wife just gave birth to triplets', you're not going to dismiss this because it came on a crumpled up piece of paper."This point is worth bearing in mind when you order and read this book. The message itself is unparalleled, still accurate after almost 100 years, even though few people are probably selling rain coats via printed sales letters any more. Everything important is in here, and anyone who wants to call themselves a professional copywriter (or in-print salesman to quote Halbert again) should read, and re-read, and then re-read this book.Now, about the editing and typos. The other reviewers are right - they're everywhere and something distractingly so. I think whoever has printed this new version had some scanning software that read and re-typecast the text for this edition, and the software repeatedly injects odd symbols or letter combinations in the text, and puts the spacing of paragraphs and text at odd intervals. Sometimes it's hard to tell where his examples of sales letters end and where his commentary on them begins because there is very little body formatting to suggest it.But you know what?What he is writing about is so important, so valuable, and so helpful that you should STILL buy this book and swallow it whole, maybe even adding your own formatting notes to make sense of it yourself.The Greats are right - this IS one of the best books ever written on copywriting and direct mail, up there with Claude Hopkins "Scientific Advertising".You should just deal with the fact that a crumpled, hand-scrawled note has delivered you the good news about your triplets. If you're too short-sighted to understand that this is in fact how and why good sales letters succeed, then you really don't understand what copy-writing is all about.

After you've read scientific advertising and gotten the general idea of direct response, this is the only book you need on copywriting. Just understand that it's not really a step-by-step book, nor is it a page turner. It's more of a reference book.You should, however, muscle through the entire book at some point if you're a serious copywriter or even if you hire copywriters on a regular basis. I have personally adopted a number of ideas from Mr. Collier's copy over the years and have seen great results from the copy.I've also read a lot of other copywriting books and attended the seminars, yada yada, but I gotta tell ya - as far as value for money and stuff I actually use .... this is pretty much all I ever needed. To give you an idea, I've been marketing online and off for over 16 years and I've seen the great majority of the "greats" work. So this is high praise.I recommend it to everyone in my entrepreneurs' inner circle group and really anyone that wants to understand how a good offer is constructed and how you get people to pull out their wallets and buy immediately.Oh and one final thought. While the book is available in electronic formats, don't bother. It's too big and too much of a reference book to be manageable in electronic form. I'd pick up a paper copy even if you don't normally do paper books.

This book constantly comes up when top copy writing books are mentioned. Along with Scientific Advertising, Ogilvy on Advertising, Reality in Advertising and Tested Advertising Methods.It's really just a big swipe file. Collier narrates you through his career in copy writing. He gives the mindset behind the copy he writes.One thing I'd like to point out that I didn't see any other reviewer touch on: his sales letters always have just as much power in the offer being made as in the persuasive power of the body copy. In every letter he asks the reader to try the product out free of charge for a week. If you like it, keep it. If not, send it back on our dime.He really takes the notion of making it easy for your prospect to buy to another level. In the Gary Halbert Letter I once read that the offer is much more important than the copy. The Robert Collier Letter Book bears witness.P.s yeah, the formatting is screwed up. Whatever program they used to transcribe the text did a port job throughout the book.

If you're looking to buy Robert Collier's Letter Book, don't buy this one (blue cover edition published by Important Books, 2013). It reads like it was slapped together by somebody who doesn't care about the material or the reader. My 11-year-old granddaughter could have done a better job of typesetting. There are no page numbers. So have fun trying to keep track of your progress through the book. There are, however, plenty of misformatted and mistyped words, sentences and paragraphs to keep you amused -- or, in my case, annoyed. I spent five minutes flipping through the book when I got it. It was instantly obvious -- a sloppy and carelessly produced project that somebody decided to knock off to make a fast and easy buck with. Well, not with my buck.I returned my copy to the seller for a refund. Ordered the 5th edition reprint instead (different publisher). I'm waiting on that one to arrive to see how it compares. Hopefully, the folks who published the facsimile reprint of the 1941 book showed a little more care and attention to detail -- and appreciation for the immensely valuable work of Mr. Collier -- than the yo-yos at "Important Books".

The text is an absolute classic and I've learned a ton from what I've read. However, the layout and typesetting of this volume is atrocious. I read the other reviews before I bought this and so I knew it was going to be a slog. It was. I wish there was a better version of this available (I'm even thinking of publishing it myself if there is enough interest (yes I really think the text is that good). Its just such a shame its been treated this badly by the publishers.

The Robert Collier Letter Book is essential reading for any aspiring copywriter or marketer. I was very excited to see it is back in print.Unfortunately, this edition has clearly been digitally scanned from an old version, and is littered with typos, random carriage returns and poor formatting. I would go as far as to say it is unreadable.No page numbers is also a little annoying.So - great book - but find an older version that has been formatted correctly.If the publishers ever correct these problems I will retract this review.

This is a really poor version, typo's and missing images, sometimes just huge chunks of the pages are simply blank, with text formatted in a single column tight to the right margin. Unreadable and unusable, returned minutes after I received it.

Ich habe das Buch gekauft, da die copywriting Legende Gary Halbert empfohlen hat. Der Inhalt an sich ist auch ganz in Ordnung.Die Kindle Version bekommt von mir jedoch nur einen Stern, da die Formatierung einfach nur SCHLIMM ist!Es sind auf fast jeder Seite Rechtschreibfehler. Der Text ist an manchen Stellen wahllos eingerückt. Es wird nicht angezeigt, wo eine Werbung aufhört und die andere anfängt. Einige Wörter haben mitten im Wort Leerzeichen?!?!?!?!Ich habe den Eindruck, dass der "Herausgeber" einfach nur mit einer OCR Software über das physische Buch drübergegangen ist und es nicht einmal gelesen hat. Eine solche Formatierung gehört VERBOTEN und ich hoffe, dass Amazon diese Kindle Version entfernen wird.

The book comes highly recommended by many people. And it indeed is great content.However this kindle version has several problems.Firstly it is missing 3 chapters compared to the originalSecondly, the formatting is non existent so you can't always tell if a paragraph is part of a letter or part of the author's commentaryThirdly, there are obvious OCR errors like half words, missing punctuation and symbols in place of letters.Reading on a kindle is convenient (and the reason I bought it), however in this case better seek out a real book copy for the whole story.