“Ogilvy & Mather has had more success with editorial layouts, than with addy layouts. Editorial layouts get higher readership than conventional advertisements.”
— David Ogilvy, How to Create Advertising that Sells
One of the turning points in my marketing career was hearing a talk that Hollis Carter gave at Mindvalley.
Back then, Hollis was already a successful entrepreneur. His venture at the time was a publishing house for Amazon Kindle books.
You can do anything with a Kindle book, Hollis said.
You can rank on Google for a competitive keyword… you can build authority… you can prospect for leads.
Hollis did a reframe to drive the last point home. A Kindle book is basically a sales letter, but Amazon distributes it for you to their huge audience… and even pays you for getting your sales message out.
Sounds pretty good, right?
And it ties into what I talked about yesterday, on how to write a magalog. Magalogs were a powerful sales format precisely because they looked and read like magazines. Camouflage works, just like Ogilvy says above.
Do you want to camouflage your sales message into a Kindle book? If you do, then much of yesterday’s advice on how to write a magalog will apply straight up.
But beware.
With a Kindle book, you’ll want to cut down the sales even more than in a magalog. And you’ll want to stuff your pitch towards the end of the book. Otherwise, you risk a ton of bad reviews.
For example, I once created a Kindle book called The Little Black Book of Essential Oil Scams. The goal was to promote another book I’d written about aromatherapy.
Inside the “Scams” book, I put a bunch of interesting and valuable content for anyone new to essential oils. I also added three mini sidebars throughout, promoting the second book I was selling.
Result?
Amazon reviewers were ready to lynch me. “Just a shameless sales pitch!”
So I learned my lesson. And when I published the 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters this last September, I put my shameless pitch towards the end of the book.
I also shamelessly asked people just to sign up for my email list, rather than to buy anything outright. A bunch of people signed up for my email list… and I haven’t had any bad reviews yet.
So let me wrap it up for you. A few days ago, a reader of my daily emails named Yusuf wrote in to ask:
“What would you be doing if freelance copywriting made you zero dollars?”
I told Yusuf that if freelance copywriting completely dried up, I’d probably start writing books on Kindle.
I’d make a bit of money from the sales of the books themselves… and then get readers to sign up for an email list and sell them something else.
Because people who have read your book will be some of the highest quality leads you will ever find. That is, assuming that you’ve given them unusual value in your book… without scratching their itch all the way.
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