Breakthrough Advertising – Eugene Schwartz

Eugene Schwartz is one of copywriting and advertising‘s legends. His story is well known among copywriters: He started in mail order as a delivery boy in 1949 and became a junior copywriter before the end of that year.

Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz,
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Eugene Schwartz is one of copywriting and advertising‘s legends. His story is well known among copywriters: He started in mail order as a delivery boy in 1949 and became a junior copywriter before the end of that year. By 1951, he was a copy chief and became the president of his own mail order firm in 1954. He skills as a copywriter led him to become one of advertising‘s highest paid consultants (Rodale Press once paid him a commission of $54,000 for four hours work).

This book is considered by many to be a classic on copywriting in general and mail order copywriting in particular. It is also legendarily reputed to be

the “most stolen” book from public libraries and it is claimed that there are only 130 copies to be found in the world. I’m not sure about that claim as my local library came up with a 1966 copy with no problem and the librarian indicated that other copies were available from other libraries. She also had never heard of it as being the “most stolen” book in public libraries.

This is the most recently published edition and it appears to have been published, in part, because of the reputed difficult of finding copies.

The price of $95.00 would seem to reflect a pent-up demand for it (more on that later).”Breakthrough Advertising” is excellent in its analysis of advertising and the marketplace. Schwartz was an advocate of the idea that advertising could not create demand but it could channel it to a certain product. He referred to demand as “Mass Desire” and believed that there had to be some level of desire before a product could be offered and sold profitably.