Читать книгу The Letter Book - Robert Collier - Страница 13

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P.E. Collier & Son had been publishing books since 1885, selling them through salesmen, directed by some thirty-seven branch offices.

In the two or three years prior to 1913, they had made six different attempts to start a department for selling books by mail—all without success. One man spent $25,000 and sold eighteen sets of books. So when I, with no knowledge of book selling and no background but our coal and coke sales, suggested that I had an idea which I believed would sell books successfully, it is no wonder the "powers-that-be" laughed at it.

It happened that P.E. Collier was my uncle and was responsible for my education, but he had always told me he did not want me in the business until I could bring something to it they could get nowhere else. For that reason, I had never before tried for a place with Collier's, but now I felt I had an idea they could use, so by letter and in person I kept trying to sell it to them.

In Tom Beck I found a sympathetic listener, for Proctor & Gamble are large users of coal, and he had seen many of the letters in our campaign and thoroughly approved the idea of them. So with his help, and that of the VicePresident, G.J. Kennedy, I finally sold them the idea of a six months' tryout.

It was not on any munificent basis, you can be sure of that. I was to have a drawing account of $25 a week, and to receive a commission of 5 percent on any sales I made by mail. To leave a good, secure, salaried job for an uncertain chance like that takes optimism of a high order, but I was young and single, and just fool enough not to know any of the things that could not be done, so I jumped at the chance. Luckily for me, I found a good mentor at Collier's in the person of Bruce Barton, who was then the assistant sales manager in charge of advertising. It was not any part of his duties to lend me a helping hand, but he went out of his way to do it. And to his suggestions and kindly criticisms I owe it that the very first letters and circulars we tried were complete successes. How complete, you can judge by the fact that the profits on our first six months' sales were 34 1/2 percent, and I was making so much money on the 5 per cent commission that the arrangement was promptly cancelled and I was put on a good, living salary.

Collier's had been selling the "Harvard Classics," Dr. Eliot's famous Five-Foot Shelf of Books, for about six years then, and it was their best seller, so of course I started my efforts with it. Their salesmen covered all the big towns, however, so my efforts had to be confined to the little towns and the rural communities, for even after we proved what could be done by mail, Collier's never forgot that their house had been built by salesmen, and they never allowed our mail efforts to interfere with the agent sales.

It was for this reason I left them after five years—to get a bigger field of activity, but meantime they were better than any post-graduate college course

There was Tom Beck, one of these master salesmen you meet once in a lifetime. He could sell any man or group of men practically anything. I have seen him go into meetings where every man was opposed to his idea and come out with every one's approval of his plan. You might not agree with him—but you could not resist him. You had the feeling: "Well, the thing is not practicable, but if Tom Beck gets behind it he'll put it over!"

Then came Bruce Barton, peer of any advertising writer I have ever seen. He used to sketch out the skeleton frame-work of his ads and then give them to me to fill in. It was a liberal education in advertising writing.

And then came George Kennedy, who had started his collection experience ringing doorbells and collecting 50 cts. a month installments on Dickens or Thackeray or some of the old, original volumes Collier's put out. He had been in the business almost as long as old R F. himself, and R F. Collier was the man who started the installment sale of books in this country! What George Kennedy did not know about parting the reluctant debtor from his money certainly is not known to many.

I went with Collier's on the first of July in 1913. On the ninth of August we dropped our first circulars into the mail. They consisted of an illustrated four page letter, the first and fourth pages carrying the letter, the inside pages the illustrations and circular copy.

The letter was sent under first-class postage without fill-in, and a stamped post card went with it. Including postage, the whole thing cost us about 4 cts. in the mail.

You can believe we watched for the returns from those circulars with fear and trembling. We had mailed 10,000 of them, mostly to advertising leads that were from one to two years old, and which had been in the hands of two or more salesmen and been returned as unsalable.

When the orders began to mount up from these old leads, the salesmen who had turned them down—and the whole sales department—sat up and began to take notice. For our first letter to those old discarded inquiries brought back 4 1/2 percent of orders for a $39 set of books!

Four and one-half percent meant that, with letters at 4 cents. each, our orders were costing us less than $1 apiece. Can you imagine that, on a $39 set of books? No wonder we showed a profit for those six months of 34 1/2 percent!

The trouble was that we soon came to the end of those old discarded leads, and after that, the salesmen didn’t let go of them so readily. But while they lasted, the "pickings" were easy. Here is the first letter we used on them:

If Dr Eliot of Harvard Were to Say to You—

"Come around to my home tonight. I want to show you some books that I believe you’ll enjoy; they are interesting, entertaining, yet they will give you all the essentials of a liberal education, even if you can spend only fifteen minutes a day with them."

You’d go, wouldn’t you, and the next morning you’d hasten to get copies of these books.

Now that is, in effect, just what Dr. Eliot has done. From his lifetime of reading, study and experience—forty years of it as President of Harvard University—he has chosen a Five Foot Shelf of just the few books, and only the few, that are really essential to the Twentieth Century American.

Just 15 Minutes a Day, and Then—

And this is what he says to you: I believe that the faithful and considerate reading of these books will give any man the essentials of a liberal education, even if he can devote to them but fifteen minutes a day."

Think of it—The Essentials of a Liberal Education, under the personal guidance of Dr. Eliot, who has trained more men for success and is a greater authority on books and reading than any other man in the world today. What other books, or who else, could offer you so much?

Dr. Eliot’s work is complete. You owe it to yourself at least to examine the result—the fruits of his 40 years’ experience as President of Harvard University. They are not the mere product of his genius—they are the finished utterance of the human race.

Examine the Books for a Week—at Our Expense

Don't send a cent of money. Simply drop the enclosed card in the mail and the complete set of Harvard Classics will be shipped to you from our nearest Branch Office AT OUR EXPENSE. Keep them for a week; browse through them; read them; enjoy them. We won't urge you to buy them either then or now, because we realize that it is up to you to make up your mind in your own way as to just what the books will be worth to you. If you decide to keep them, you can pay for them as you like, even as little as $2.00 a month; if not, you can return them at the end of the week without question at our expense.

Here is your chance to avail yourself of Dr. Eliot's wonderful knowledge and experience to prepare yourself for life. You owe it to yourself to at least SEE and EXAMINE this Library that he selected to speed you on the road to a bigger, broader success. The card brings it to your door, charges prepaid. Merely put your name on it and drop it in the mail.

But remember, in the great book of Time there is but one word—"NOW "—so drop your card in the mail now.

Very truly yours,

* * * * *

The inside pages showed, on the left hand, a great pile of books, piled all over each other until they practically hid the background of the Harvard University buildings. On the right hand was the orderly row of the Five-Foot Shelf, with the Harvard Library behind it. The keynote of the copy was a quotation from Emerson: "In the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris are a million books. A man might read from dawn to dark for fifty years, yet die in the first alcove."

And what would he get as a result of his fifty years' reading? A heterogeneous collection of facts, unrelated, of no particular value to any one or anything. In the "Harvard Classics," on the other hand, just a few minutes a day would give him the orderly outline of all that man has learned—in effect, a liberal education.

Our first letter having pulled so well, we tried a number of others to determine how many follow-ups we could profitably send on these old leads. On the series we finally worked out, our second letter pulled about 2 1/2 percent, our third 1 1/2 percent, our fourth 1 percent and our final one 2 percent.

Here is letter No. 2. With it we enclosed a circular, which is reproduced after the letter. Following it is the post card that accompanied them.

Will you Examine ”The Harvard Classics”—

Dr Eliot's Five Foot Shelf of Books—

If we send you a set at our own expense

FOR A WEEKS EXAMINATION?

We don't ask you to decide now whether you will want to keep the set. All we want you to do is examine the books for a week in your own home—see for yourself what a wonderful field they open up to you—judge whether they will be worth seven cents a day to you in pleasure, in profit, in actual mental growth.

The World's Civilization on a Book—shelf

For years Dr. Eliot has felt that all the books really essential to the Twentieth Century American could be contained on a Five Foot Shelf, and when—after 40 years as President of Harvard University—he gave up active work, he set himself the task of picking out from all the myriads of things which have been written and said during the past five thousand years, just those few works of 90 the greatest thinkers in every field which most vividly picture the thought and achievement of the human race since the world began.

The result is literally the putting of the World's civilization on a single book shelf. From the many writings of the greatest thinkers Dr. Eliot has picked those few characteristic works which cover their main ideas, which best express their basic thoughts. He has made it possible for you to have the best works of each of them without having to burden your shelves with the complete writings of all.

Just Fifteen Minutes a Day—

And this is what Dr. Eliot says to you: "I believe that the faithful and considerate reading of these books will give any man the essentials of a liberal education, even if he can devote to them but fifteen minutes a day."

Think of it! THE ESSENTIALS OF A LIBERAL EDUCATION, in only fifteen minutes a day, under the personal guidance of Dr. Eliot, the best teacher and the greatest authority on books and reading in the world today. What other books, or who else, could offer you so much?

A Saving to You of $433.05

There are fifty volumes in the Harvard Classics, and they contain 418 complete works by 300 of the greatest writers the world has ever known. Bought separately in even the cheapest editions and bindings, these 418 works would cost you $472.05, yet we offer them to you, uniformly bound in silk cloth stamped in gold, with foot-notes, reading guide and an encyclopedic index of 76,000 subjects, at only 90 for each of the 418 works—$39.00 for the set complete in fifty volumes, and you can pay for them just as you like—even as little as $2.00 a month.

An Encyclopedia of References

Lawyers tell us that in their pleas, editors in their editorials, teachers in their teaching, clergymen in their sermons, and business men in their occasional talks, they are getting to depend in a wonderful degree on this key to the world’s thought.

You see, it not only gives you the best thought of the world’s Masters on most important subjects, but every thought, every period, every subject even remotely touched upon, is made instantly accessible through the wonderful Index that is appended to volume 50—an Index that contains 76,000 references.

Examine the Books for a Week-at Our Expense

Don’t send a cent of money. Simply drop the enclosed card in the mail and the complete set of Harvard Classics will be shipped to you from our nearest Branch Office AT OUR EXPENSE. Keep them for a week; browse through them; read them; enjoy them. We won’t urge you to buy them either then or now, because we realize that it is up to you to make up your mind in your own way as to just what the books will be worth to you. If you decide not to keep them, you can return them at the end of the week without question at our expense.

Letter No. 3 is one that came into the series later, after the start of the World War. Like the two before it, it is built around the one idea enunciated by Carlyle: "All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been—it is lying in magic preservation in the pages of books." But it takes guidance to find the right books, and in Dr. Eliot, for forty years President of Harvard University, we had found the guide par excellence.

Its enclosure, which follows, added measurably to its pulling power—in fact, it has been our experience that a good circular will add from 25 to 33 per cent to the pulling power of almost any letter After the circular follows the order card—the same, except for the copy on the front, as on follow-up No. 2.

The Harvard Classics Contain a Liberal Education

They are the crowning educational achievement of Dr. Chas. W. Eliot, representing the results of his lifetime of reading, study and teaching—40 years of it as President of Harvard University. They contain that literature of the world which broadens the horizon, liberalizes the mind and enables the busy Twentieth Century American to become really well-read and well-posted in just a few minutes a day.

The World's Civilization on a Bookshelf

There are fifty volumes in the Harvard Classics, and they contain 418 complete works by three hundred of the greatest writers that have ever lived. From all the myriads of things which have been written and said during the past 5,000 years, Dr. Eliot has chosen those few works of the greatest thinkers in every field which most vividly picture the thought and achievement of the human race since the world began.

Examine the Books for a Week—at Our Expense

Don't send a cent of money. Simply drop the enclosed card in the mail and the complete set of Harvard Classics will be shipped to you from our nearest Branch Office AT OUR EXPENSE. Keep them for a week; browse through them; read them; enjoy them. We won't urge you to buy them either then or now, because we realize that it is up to you to make up your mind in your own way as to just what the books will be worth to you. If you decide not to keep them, you can return them at the end of the week without question at our expense.

But the War—?

Just bear in mind what President Wilson, the greatest leader of thought the world has ever known, wrote a short time ago to the President of a Western College who asked him if our colleges should close and general education be neglected at this time.

"By no means should our schools and colleges be closed during the period of the war, and general education be neglected. Never in History have educated, cultured men and women been so needed as they will be in the next few years to carry on the work of reconstruction and peace."

Here is your chance to avail yourself of Dr. Eliot's wonderful knowledge and experience to prepare yourself for the after-the-war problems. You owe it to yourself to at least SEE and EXAMINE this Library that he selected to speed you on the road to a bigger, broader success. The card brings it to your door, charges prepaid. Merely put your name on it and drop it in the mail.

But remember, in the great book of Time there is but one word "Now" so drop your card in the mail now.

Very truly yours,

For No. 4 we used a large mailing folder, recapitulating all the arguments of the three letters and containing only a post card.

No. 5 is going to be a surprise to many people. It is long—oh, how long! Four whole pages of closely type-written stuff! Who would ever read it? Yet people did, evidently, for from a low point of 1 percent on the previous circular, and 11 1/2 percent on No. 3 letter, the orders jumped up to 2 percent! And all efforts we tried, to make a sixth or seventh or eighth follow-up pay, were practically fruitless. So we called this our "mopping-up letter" and filed away the leads. Here is the letter. Only a post card went with it.

A Saving to You of $413.05

Brentano's, the largest retail Booksellers in the World, quote these 418 works in even the cheapest editions and bindings at $4792.05.

THE LOWEST PRICE AT WHICH THE HARVARD CLASSICS will ever be sold has now been reached in the new Silk Cloth Edition, costing only one-eighth the price of the original sets.

I have put aside one hundred sets of this edition for the specific purpose of FREE EXAMINATION. This letter is your opportunity to examine one of these hundred "Free Examination Sets" in your own home.

It is the final bedrock price to you, and IT HOLDS GOOD FOR ONLY A SHORT TIME LONGER. I write you because, with all that you have heard and read ABOUT the Five-Foot Shelf of Books, you have never yet seen them. You have never yet had the privilege I now offer you of actually handling the volumes, reading in your own home one or two of the 418 masterpieces, proving to your own satisfaction the wonderful completeness of the 76,000-word index, surprising yourself that fifty books so well made and so serviceably bound can be sold AT SUCH A PRICE.

Just read the extract quoted below from letter from the Manager of Brentano's, the great retail booksellers, whose main office, you know, is at the comer of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-seventh Street, New York City:

"We are returning herewith your list of items made up from the Five-Foot Shelf of Books. This list of books embraces about 300 authors and their works.

"The same can be supplied in regular editions in cloth binding for $472.05, with the exception of about fourteen to twenty authors which were published during the 14th to the 18th centuries and exist only in very rare editions and very costly. Same can only be had for reference in European Libraries, as copies are seldom found in the open market."

Their itemized quotations are exceedingly interesting. Volume 1, for instance, which contains Franklin, Wolman, Penn, can be duplicated in three little volumes of Everyman's Library at 50 cents each or only $1.50 (Harvard Classics price $1.10). But volume 8, containing the nine greatest Greek Dramas by Aesehylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, would cost $10.60 to duplicate, while volume 39, which contains some of the most prized possessions of the British Museum and the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, has rarely been reprinted and is almost unobtainable now except in the Five-Foot Shelf of Books AT ANY PRICE.

First, therefore, I should like you to satisfy your own curiosity as to how it is possible for us to manufacture and sell $472.05 worth of literature in uniform binding, with footnotes, glossaries, introductions, etc.—at just one-eighth that price. I should like you to see one of these free examination sets for this reason first.

But it isn't merely of figures that I want to speak to you. I should like you rather to think of the Five-Foot Shelf in terms of TIME, which to the busy modern man is not only money, but is more valuable than money. Look at the Five-Foot Shelf from the standpoint of the time it will save you and your wife and your children.

You have a letter or a paper to write, or a speech to make; some member of your household has a paper for a woman s club; one of the children has a topic assigned at school; some subject is discussed in the newspapers and you want to read up on it; where can the material be found at a moment's notice? Nowhere that I know except in the Index of the Harvard Classics.

Take the subject "Health," for instance, and see what has been prepared for you. This is an actual extract from the Index:

"HEALTH, Antoninus's care of, ii, 197; Burke on pleasure and idea of, xxiv, 36, 38; Carlyle on, xxv, 4234, 435-6; Carlyle on care of, 402-3; Channing on, xxviii, 366-7; Descartes on, xxxiv, 50; Epictetus on care of, ii, 160 (118); Hunt on, xxvii, 307; More on, xxxvi, 213-14, 215; Locke on importance of, xxxvii, 9, 10; Pascal on use and misuse of, xxviii, 374; Pope on, xl, 443; rules of, xxxvii, 10-28; unconsciousness of, xxv, 338-48; Woolman on care of, i, 24445.

"HEALTH, by Pinkney, xxviii, 394-45.

"HEALTH, Here's His in Water, vi, 191.

"HEALTH, Here's to my, vi, 28-9.

"HEALTH, Regimen of, Bacon’s, iii, 85-6.

"HEALTH, to them that’s always, vi, 477."

Remarkably suggestive, isn’t it? So on every one of the other 75,999 subjects you have at your finger tips the information that it would take you hours or even days to gather from scattered volumes.

But neither time nor money is the proper word with which to picture The Harvard Classics. The real word is pleasure, self-satisfaction, the delight of mental growth. Look at one of these hundred free-examination sets from this standpoint. Shut your eyes for a moment and let these 418 friends take you by the hand, carry your imagination away with them. You will travel down the Nile with Herodotus; or roam the Spanish Main with Drake; see the great Grecian dramas in the Ampitheatre of Athens; hear Cicero denounce Catiline in the Roman Senate; follow Cellini through the thrilling intricacies of his dealings with Princes and Pontiffs; stand with Columbus on the Santa Maria as he sees the blue haze which is the new world; see Harvey as he discovers the circulation of the blood.

IMPORTANT! The Price of The Harvard Classics will soon be advanced.

Paper, Ink, and Binding have more than doubled in cost since the material used in the manufacture of these books was bought. Our present stock will last only a short time longer, and then our prices must be increased to keep pace with the costs.

Take advantage of the present low costs by mailing your card NOW.

* * * * *

Nothing remarkable about any of these letters, is there? You have seen as good or better ones many a time. But they had this virtue.

They brought back what they went after the orders. In the five years I was with Collier’s they sold many hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of books.

Why? Because they set out with a definite goal in mind and they made every word carry them one step nearer that goal. Take letter No.1 as an example. What is its purpose?

1. To winnow out from the mass of readers those few who can be sold the idea of "culture," the value of higher education.

If Dr. Eliot of Harvard were to say to you—To come around to my home tonight. I want to show you some books I believe you'll enjoy; they are interesting, entertaining, yet they will give you all the essentials of a liberal education, even if you can spend only fifteen minutes a day with them."

Can you imagine any start more likely to attract the attention and arouse the interest of a man culturally inclined, who had not enjoyed the benefits of a college education? You know many such men, and you know how many of them feel that they are handicapped through lack of the cultural advantages a college gives. In the back of their minds always is the fear that they are a bit inferior to their college-trained friends. So how they would welcome the idea of a talk with so famous an educator as Dr. Eliot! How they would jump at the idea of a college reading course under his guidance! Therefore how well that idea fitted in with the mental conversation going on in the back of their minds!

2. The ease of it!

They have had opportunities to take night courses in schools and colleges that would, in time, give them every educational advantage that would have been theirs had they spent four years in college. But this entailed so much work. And an expenditure of time out of all proportion to its value to them in dollars, and they passed it by.

But along comes the chance to get all the essentials, under the guidance of one of the greatest educators the country has known, in only fifteen minutes a day! Dr. Eliot has used his forty years of experience to pick the few worthwhile books from all the millions that have been written, and edit them so that in a few minutes' pleasurable reading each evening, they can make up for the four years college they missed.

3. The free trial, no money or risk.

It is made so easy for the reader to examine the books, without obligation or risk of any kind. Naturally his curiosity is aroused to learn what books Dr. Eliot considers essential. He would like to see them, to glance through them, perhaps read a page here and there.

Well, here is his chance to do it without a penny of cost. Perhaps he has already read some of the books. Perhaps he is nearer the standard of his college friends than he had thought. It would be nice to see, anyway, and as long as it does not cost anything to have look—

No. 2 letter starts right where No. 1 left off: "Will you examine the "Harvard Classics" if we send you a set at our own expense for a week's free examination?"

Don't decide now whether you want to buy them or not. Plenty of time for that later. Just browse through them for a week and see for yourself how interesting they are, what absorbing entertainment what marvelous education.

Think of it! The world's civilization on a bookshelf! All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been—within the compass of a five-foot shelf of books! Can you afford not to look at it?

Education in the highest sense, entertainment in the best sense, all made possible in fifteen minutes a day. And then the price! A saving of $433.05 from the regular bookstore price of the same works in separate editions. That alone makes it a bargain well worth any man's money.

Then as an added inducement, it is a book of reference as well, an encyclopedia in itself. Surely it is worth your while at least to send for these books and look them over!

Then followed the Lincoln folder, with its appeal to ambition, its description and argument in its center pages, its proof of value in the reproduced letter from Brentano's on the last page.

Nos. 3 and 4 are reiterations of the same line of argument in different words and different pictures.

No. 5 is the old standby—the last-chance offer. It plays up the saving, it repeats all the advantages that are yours if you act now, all you may lose by delay. It emphasizes the no-money-no risk, then makes it so easy for you to order that it seems a shame not to take advantage of the opportunity.

In short, it tried to such good purpose to follow the rules laid down in the previous chapters, that even as the fifth letter in the series, it brought back $39 orders at a cost of less than $2 an order! Than which there are few quicker methods of making money.