Today I will recommend to you a book that I have not read and that I have no plans on reading.
Let me tell you why I am still recommending it to you.
The book in question is written by Denny Hatch. Just yesterday, it was re-released after a long time of not being available.
A bit of background:
I’ve known of Denny Hatch for a long time because he once put together a different book, called Million Dollar Mailings. That was a book with a cool proof element. It brought together a bunch of sales letters, each of which had made $1M+, along with the history and context of the mailing and the people behind it.
My kind of stuff. And worth the big price tag it sold for.
But that is NOT the book I am recommending to you today.
The book I am recommending to you today is one that a long-time reader of this newsletter, Jeffrey Thomas, decided to republish on behalf of Denny Hatch.
Jeffrey himself is not just some kook who likes to republish out-of-print books. He’s a direct response copywriter at MarketingProfs, a big education platform for B2B marketers. He’s also got a podcast on marketing, on which I appeared some years ago.
A few months ago, Jeffrey contacted me, full of enthusiasm, about resurrecting this great Denny Hatch book, called Emotional Hot-Button Copywriting. Would I want to read it?
The fact is, no. My own to-read list is already too long. I’m reluctant to take others’ recommendations even when backed by a lot of enthusiasm.
I asked Jeffrey why he thought this book was so important that it merited republishing. In his own good time, Jeffrey responded:
===
Hey John,
A few weeks ago you asked why I was interested in releasing Denny Hatch’s book (which will be officially released next Monday, Feb 16).
When I first started in copy, there were many people saying how important benefits are in the sales process. And they still say that, and they’re not wrong.
But a small group of direct response writers talked about emotions in copy. The Rule of One, for instance, occasionally includes the importance of a single driving emotion. But not everyone includes emotion in their description of the Rule of One, like it’s a secret or a shameful thing.
Personally, I’ve tried hard to not be too emotional in life. I already cry easily at movies, which I find ridiculous, and I worried that being emotional might convey the wrong message. One of weakness.
Slowly I realized that emotions are in fact why we choose to do most things, and that I’m a fool if I leave it out. But that doesn’t mean I need to cry. There are plenty of powerful emotions.
And since Hatch’s book was based on successful sales letters focused around emotions, what better way to learn how to apply this aspect than with swipes from highly successful copy.
I couldn’t find the book, so I asked Denny if I could help him republish it, for his benefit and my own and anyone else who wants to learn how emotions can be used to sell with success.
===
Denny Hatch’s republished book has a legit reason for existing (emotions ARE important in copywriting).
It also has legit proof behind it (again, a bunch of winning sales letters, which illustrate the concepts and techniques).
That’s why I’m recommending this book to you today, in case you need it.
The fact is, I needed this book myself, and I coulda gotten a lot of value out of it, 10 or so years ago, in the first 2-3 years of learning about copywriting.
At that point, I had learned the structure of sales copy. I understood how to provide proof and make a logical argument. I could handle objections.
But much of the time, something was missing, and I knew it. Some substance. The emotion.
I fixed that for myself over the years. I read a lot about copy and about psychology. I bought a bunch of courses and even went through some of them. I experimented, I observed myself and others, I dissected others’ copy and my own when it worked.
I took me, I don’t know, two, three, four, five years, but eventually I overcame my own deficits or reluctance around writing emotional copy, in those situations where it’s needed.
And that’s why I have no plans to read Denny Hatch’s republished book.
But if writing sales copy is still a mysterious topic to you, and in particular, if you’re awed or intimidated by the alchemy of getting people to feel something real, just by arranging the little black letters they see on a page or screen, then this book can be valuable for you, today.
This book is expensive.
$49.
That’s because it’s only available in a large, paperback edition, full of color and pictures and real sales letters.
If you’d like to get it, before it goes out of print again: