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TIME-LIFE BOOKS "COWBOY" LETTER
When it comes to creating great letters to sell books by mail, nobody tops Time-Life Books. They
regularly use colorful envelopes and big, beautiful brochures; however, it's their letters that close
the sale.
Many consider a package developed to sell a series called "The Old West" as Time-Life's best oi
all time. The letter started with three "survival tips" for life in the Old West. They were intriguing
enough to encourage further reading:
When two cowboys approach each other on the trail, both are
expected to keep course and perhaps pass a friendly word; to veer
off is to suggest furtiveness — or even danger. A wave of greeting is
bad form — it may scare the horse.
"Milk is relished upon the plains," wrote J. L Campbell in his 1864
Emigrant's Guide Overland. "In case of a storm when cooking cannot
be done, it serves a tolerable purpose." Surplus milk can always
be churned into butter simply by hanging pails beneath the jolting
wagon; at day's end the butter is ready.
Watch what you say to a Westerner. An Englishman visiting a friend
on a ranch in Wyoming inquired of the foreman, "Is your master at
home?" The foreman looked him straight in the eye and replied, "The
son of a bitch hasn't been born yet."
With those teasers in a Johnson Box at the top of page one, readers were primed for more details
They began:
Someone once had the guts to ask Clay Allison what he did for a living.
He must have been smiling when he asked the question, because
he lived to repeat the answer. Allison said, "I am a shootist," and
with those four words he eloquently summed up a long career dedicated
to blasting his fellow men to smithereens.
Allison was one of a special breed in the old West — a gunfighter —
and you can read his story, along with those of dozens of other
heroes and rascals, in the exciting pages of The Gunfighters, the fascinating
introductory volume in THE OLD WEST series. You are invited
to examine this book for 10 days FREE, without obligation to buy
it.
www.greatestsalesletters.com - 251 -