For friends of John Bejakovic…

Marty Edelston sent me a check for $2,000…

for this advertising collection he credited with helping him build a $125 MILLION BUSINESS

It’s yours for $97

Dear Marketing Friend,

What can a chain-smoking hermit teach you about creating copywriting fascinations that fill your coffers with cash?

Plenty.

Mel Martin, the “father of fascinations,” almost singlehandedly catapulted Boardroom Reports to $125 million through the power of his pen and captivating copywriting fascinations.

What’s a fascination and how is it different from a bullet marked by this familiar typographical symbol ■?

Bullets make your prospects wonder IF your product works. Fascinations make your prospects wonder HOW your product works.

You’ve no doubt seen them before — fascinations just like these:

■ “What banks don’t want you to know”

■ “Bills it’s okay to pay late”

■ “Safest place in any hotel room to hide valuables” and of course…

■ “What never to eat on an airplane”

“Here’s what Denny Hatch, the greatest direct response ad archivist since Julian Watkins and founder of Who’s Mailing What?, had to say about him.”

When Marty Edelston, founder of the Boardroom Reports and Bottom Line/Personal publishing empire, hired Mel Martin, he already knew of Martin’s reputation as the fascination writer for New York Times/Quadrangle Books in the 1970s—the FORCE behind their sales machine.

This was a copywriter so majestic, his name was kept secret for fear of being snatched up by competitors. After all:

Who’s ever heard of a copywriter…

■ Whose mailing inspired the creation of a book, instead of the other way around

■ Whose direct mail package was mailed 16 million times in the early 1990s?

■ Who broke an unbreakable rule by NOT even listing the price of the newsletter in a “3 issues FREE” offer?

But before Mel Martin went to work with Marty to take his publishing business to the moon, he had carte blanche writing book ads for Quadrangle. His copywriting corpus at Quadrangle cemented him as one of the greatest book advertising writers of all time.

Here’s what Marty had to say about Mel Martin when he was writing coupon ads for unsold advertising space.

I remember reading this line in the summer of 2008 in Denny Hatch’s magnificent interview with Marty Edelston and Brian Kurtz — 14 years after it was originally published — and thinking, “What’s the problem?”

Historic article from Denny Hatch: “Master of Fascinations”

Simply put, this article was:

The midnight discovery that changed my life!

Listen.

The fascinations and book ads in this collection will pump you with more energy than a wild insomniac tossing back espresso shots at midnight.

I WAS that wild insomniac!

Here’s the first thing that grabbed me by the lapels in that article.

“Mel Martin was the world’s slowest copywriter. It would take him three to four months to write a direct mail package. He could get stuck for a month on a letter opening.” (Martin Edelston, Boardroom Inc.)

Ah! There was hope for me!

It was reassuring to learn that a member of the copywriting pantheon was also slow as molasses on a cold winter’s day.

By the way…

Did I mention I’m writing a book on procrastination?

Perhaps, it’s not what you’d imagine.

Because I’m writing the world’s first book on becoming a better procrastinator. Heck, if nothing’s curbed it by now, why not aim for world-class?

I started writing it sometime back in the 80s. If you’d like to pre-order a copy, it’ll be finished in 2029. 🙂

But seriously, almost any problem can be remedied—whether it’s procrastination, a shortage of cash, or even lack of experience—when you’ve got the right knowledge… and take ACTION.

Back to the interview.

Let me give you the full quote that…

Started me on a MANIC tear!

“In the early ’70s, Mel Martin was hired as a copywriter by Herb Nagourney, the toothy publisher of The New York Times books whose business was built on running coupon ads in unsold space in the Times. While there, Martin created what Edelston considers to be some of the greatest book advertising ever written. “I would love to go through The Times on microfiche and find those ads,” Edelston says. “Each was a masterpiece.” (Target Marketing; Vol. 17, Iss. 12, Dec 1994)

Beaconing to prospects like a lighthouse in a sea of clutter… Mel Martin style!

It was after midnight… but I thought, “What’s the problem?”

These ads aren’t something you’d find in a normal search engine query, but an obsessed ad archivist knows where to look.

I was fourteen years late to the party — from when the article was originally published — but what the heck?

Bingo!

I’d found the first one. Then the second and third. By the time I finished around 3:00 a.m., I’d rounded up dozens of them.

Now it was time to read them!

I stayed up for a few more hours, going through each and every ad.

Mel Martin’s space ads were everything Marty Edelston said they were… and more!

And heck, since Marty started a company from a basement desk wedged next to a furnace and turned it into a $125 million enterprise, who was I to argue?

My next step was clear.

I caught a few hours of sleep, then headed over to the copy shop to get the ads printed. Next, I grabbed Marty’s address in Connecticut and had the batch shipped to him, along with a brief cover letter.

A week or so later, a bolt from the blue struck when I went to my mailbox.

Did Marty Edelston just send me a check for $2,000?

I was never going to be on the shortlist of Boardroom’s superstar copywriters, but getting this check from Marty was the next best thing!

The $2,000 was just a token of gratitude—a drop in the bucket compared to what was to come.

Because later, I had several phone conversations with Marty. And what we discussed was worth 1,000 times that check.

And we explored how ultimately, it’s not about any copywriting, marketing, or publishing “technique.”

Heck, it even transcends business itself. It’s about the LOVE of the game, because without it, we’re just going through the motions—no matter how much the revenue or the ROI.

Mel Martin and the “Love of the Game”

Here’s an inspiring quote from Marty’s right hand man, Brian Kurtz — the other force who helped catapult Boardroom and Bottom Line to the cosmos.

In case you’re thinking book advertising is great but…

**What about about fascinations for selling real world products… like houses?**

Some years ago, a long-time friend in direct response sent me an email with the following line:

“Can you imagine using 100’s of blind fascinations to sell a house, or iPhone, or an accounting service? LOL”

My first reaction was to agree with him before thinking…

What am I, crazy?

Because I very nearly sold the most expensive home in the Southwest United States…

Thanks not to any genius of my own, but to the power of the lowly fascination.

How a lowly fascination turned a midnight write into the HOTTEST real estate ad on (don’t laugh!) eBay

But that’s not all.

Because this year I’ve tested the response boosting power of the fascination to amp up sales for supplements and serums in health and beauty markets with red hot informational premiums like: “How to Make Your Supplements Work Better.” It’s working like gangbusters.

Grab your copy of “How to Turn Fascinations into Fortunes” and discover:

■ Cooking up fascinations Mel Martin style (page 68)

■ $770 product sold off the page (in 1970!) in a mass market offer? (Page 32)

■ The parenthetical POWER headline. Prospect? Procrastinators! (page 15)

■ Beaconing to groups like a lighthouse in a sea of clutter… especially when they don’t realize they’re part of “the group.” (page 27)

■ How I almost sold the most expensive home in the Southwest United States with a lone Mel Martin-inspired fascination… as a rookie real estate copywriter (page 73)

■ The Mel Martin “contrast principle” offer headline that’s raking in a fortune today (page 10)

■ Most successful customer acquisition headline of all time? Filled with FASCINATIONS! (page 14)

■ TABOO topic made mainstream… thanks to fascinations? (page 32)

■ The patented Mel Martin (not quite) headline (page 24)

■ And much more!

RESERVE YOUR 95-PAGE COPY NOW AT 92% OFF

This isn’t just another PDF to store on your computer — it’s an advertising adventure that could be the spark that reignites your “love of the game.”

Yours for bolder response,

Lawrence Bernstein
(The world’s most obsessed ad archivist)

P.S. Don’t miss the ALL NEW “How to Turn Fascinations into Fortunes: Copywriting Secrets To Fascinate, Captivate, And Dominate” as one of John Bejakovic’s subscribers.

P.P.S. Respond now and snag the: “The Sales Liberator” The lost copywriting system from the patent medicine era for rescuing sales from jaded prospects who’ve been burned once too often.