I’m taking this description straight from the Gary Halbert letter. Why? Because Gary was one of the greatest copywriters of the 20th century, and probably of the 21st as well (though we have another 9 decades to go, and Gary sadly didn’t make it through the first). Read his description of the book here, buy it (through my link preferably!), and do yourself a big, big favor and visit thegaryhalbertletter.com. Just reading those letters and taking them to heart is enough to make a copywriter of you. On with Gary’s review of this book:
More than 60 years ago, a man named E. Haldeman-Julius conducted the most fascinating and large-scale market research program I’ve ever heard about. Are you familiar with Haldeman-Julius? He’s the guy who published the world famous Little Blue Books.
What’s that? You’ve never heard of the Little Blue Books? What are you anyway, just a young kid? You say you’re wondering what a publishing venture you’ve never even heard about can teach you about marketing?
Plenty. The story of the Little Blue Books offers up a treasure trove of marketing insights that is pure gold. Here are the details: Once upon a time, way back in the 1920′s, the Little Blue Books were born. They were, all in all, a collection of some 2,000 titles. All the books had a blue cover and measured 3-1/2 by 5 inches. Most often they contained 64 pages, although sometimes they went up to 128 pages. The content of the Little Blue Books was wide and varied. They covered everything from Shakespeare to the Debate on Birth Control. Many of them were self-help books of the “How To” genre. They were sold in large ads that appeared in many of the major newspapers and other publications such as Colliers and the Saturday Evening Post. They sold for a nickel (5 cents) and you had to buy at least 20 of them with every order.
Now listen: Do you remember when Playboy magazine first hit the newsstands? Remember the technique of how to buy it? Remember how you’d go to a newsstand and grab copies of Life and Look and maybe the National Geographic and a couple of others and then you’d pick up a Playboy and hide it in the middle of all those others when you went up to the cash register?
You do remember all that? Geez, time sure passes, doesn’t it? Well, since a person had to buy 20 Little Blue Books at a time, that meant he could anonymously sandwich in an order for what he really wanted to read or learn about with all that stuff society was telling him he was supposed to be interested in.
To say that the Little Blue Books sold well would be somewhat of an understatement. How many of them were sold? I’m glad you asked because the answer is…..
More Than 100 Million!
And listen to this: After Haldeman-Julius had sold over 100 million of these little books, then he wrote a book titled The First Hundred Million to tell what he had learned from this publishing venture. His statistics are amazing. They reveal exactly what interested the American public in the 1920s and in exactly what relative proportions. And you know what? Those statistics are dead on target today!
What subject was the American public most willing to pay and read about in the 1920′s? The same one they’re most willing to pay to read about today.
Sex.
Indeed, The First Hundred Million is a book that contains a precise and valid statistical measurement of America’s inner most needs and greeds. So why didn’t I mention it in last month’s newsletter when I listed the greatest marketing books of all time? Simply because I didn’t have a copy of it and I wasn’t sure it was obtainable. Those others that are out-of-print are hard to find but, with a little effort, they are at least gettable. So anyway, what happens is a good friend and long-time client of mine, Brian Smith and his trusty helper Amy, found a copy of Haldeman-Julius’ book and Xeroxed it for me!
Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
And now, without further adieu, I am simply going to extract for you some data from this wonderful book. Haldeman-Julius sold 20,700,000 Little Blue Books in 1927. Many of then were about sex. Let’s see what we can learn from his annual sales figures for that year. Hmn? A book titled The Art of Kissing sold 60,500 copies, yet one titled The Art Of Courtship sold only 17,500 copies. What Married Women Should Know (a euphemistic titled that Haldeman-Julius really wanted to call Sex Facts For Married Women) sold 112,000 copies while What Married Men Should Know sold 97,500 copies. Women’s Sexual Life sold 97,500 copies, Man’s Sexual Life sold 54,000 copies. Confidential Chats With Wives sold 52,000 copies, while Confidential Chats With Husbands sold only 29,500 copies.
Hmn? I guess a woman’s sexual revelations have much more commercial appeal than a man’s, don’t they?
Hah! Here’s something. It seems that Modern Aspect of Birth Control appealed to 73,000 readers, while Debate on Birth Control appealed only to 27,000.
I guess they didn’t want to hear all the arguments, they just wanted to know how to do it.
Ah, but let’s go for what they really wanted to read. Check out this figure: Prostitution in the Modern World – 129,500 copies!
As opposed to The Evolution of Marriage which sold only 20,000 copies.
Here’s a strange one. Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun sold 46,000 copies, while How to Write Love Letters sold only 23,000 copies.
And Facts About Venereal Disease sold 41,500 copies as opposed to the more specific Facts About Syphilis which sold only 36,000.
O.K. that’s enough sex for this month. Let’s move on to the area of self-education. Just look at this difference: How to Improve Your Conversation sold 77,000 copies yet The Romance of Words only 10,500. Hmn? Hints in Public Speaking sold 46,500 copies, How to Write Advertising 20,000 copies, How to Write Book Reviews only 8,000 copies. How to Psycho-Analyze Yourself sold 43,000 while another titled How I Psycho-Analyzed Myself only 13,500. More numbers: How to Fight Nervous Troubles 39,000, Facts About Will Power 38,500, Your Memory and How to Improve It 37,000 copies, Your Talent and How to Develop It 35,500, Psychology of Leadership 32,000, How to Think Logically 30,500, Psychology of Character Building 29,000, The Conquest of Fear 27,500 and Psychology of Laughter 14,000.
Here’s an illuminating statistic: How to Break Bad Habits sold 29,000 copies as opposed to How to Form Good Habits which sold only 20,000.
And another: Care of Skin and Hair sold 52,000, yet How to Take Care of Your Mouth and Teeth only 8,000.
What foreign languages do Americans want to learn most? Here they are in rank order:
Spanish Self-Taught
French Self-Taught
German Self-Taught
Italian Self-Taught
Esperanto Self-Taught
Latin Self-Taught
47,000
46,500
27,500
21,500
17,000
10,500
What do we like to eat? Or, more precisely, what do we like to cook? How to Make All Kinds of Candy sold 45,000 copies, How to Make Pies and Pastries 29,000, How to Cook Fish and Meats 21,500 and, dead last, was French Cooking for Amateurs at 9,500.
The demand for info on proper manners always astonishes me. Back in 1927, the Little Blue Book titled Hints on Etiquette sold 72,000 copies! Less surprising, at least to me, is that Party Games for Grown-Ups sold 46,500.
What of the professions? These figures tell a story:
Best Jokes About Doctors
About Preachers
About Lawyers
25,000
23,000
21,000
Listen: I’m not going to give you the figures on poetry and the classics because my space is limited here and I doubt those marketing stats will have much practical value to many of you. The same is true of books of proverbs, fiction, plays, the classics, etc.
What is super instructive, however, is the chapter called THE HOSPITAL which is subtitled How Little Blue Books Are Given New Zest by New Titles!
Consider: When Gautier’s Fleece of Gold was changed to The Quest for a Blonde Mistress, sales jumped from 6,000 to 50,000! When the title of Oscar Wilde’s Pen, Pencil and Poison was changed to The Story of a Notorious Criminal, sales more than tripled! The book Patent Medicine did poorly. Yet, when changed to The Truth About Patent Medicine, sales more than tripled! Arthur Schopenhauer’s Art of Controversy didn’t do squat until retitled as How to Argue Logically when, thereupon, it enjoyed sales of 30,000 per year.
You already know what happened when Thomas De Quincey’s Essay on Conversation was changed to How to Improve Your Conversation – but do you know why?
There, now you have plenty of reading. This book and Gary Halbert. Knock yourself out. And read them again. And again.