June 3, 2026
A book about marketing written by Gary Halbert
Date Purchased: Mar 6, 2016
Date Started: May 29, 2026
Date Finished:
Reflections and Random Thoughts
This book is a series of letters written by Gary Halbert, from prison to his son Bond Halbert. While it is full of advice about everything from how and when to exercise to how to make money in direct mail, it is noticeably absent any advice on how to stay out of prison!
I’ve tried to read this book several times – this time because it is part of a reading and copywriting challenge in a community I’m active in, Rebelpreneurs.
Insights
Key Takeaways
Choose your market and then your product – not the other way around. I own a small business. I did what I think most people do – I have a thing, I do a thing, and now I’m going to try to sell it. Gary Halbert did something different – he chose a hungry market and then created a product to sell to them. He, by the way, made millions.
Something Actionable
There are a lot of actionable takeaways in this book. He talks a lot about exercise – as does MJ DeMarco in Choose Hard, Live Easy – which I just finished reading as well.
Exercise more is on every list I’ve got everywhere, including this one.
Overall, it’s an interesting read. For me, walking away with a couple of good ideas not found elsewhere makes the book worth the read. And I did.
I doubt he is the greatest copywriter of all time as many say – and let’s remember he is writing from prison.
Unable to fulfill his promises – if we’re willing to make promises we can’t keep I think we can all be great copywriters.
What Everyone Else Thinks
Amazon
This book has 2235 ratings on Amazon – 70% 5-star – many of the 5-star ratings are from people who knew and worked with Gary personally.
Of the remaining 30% of reviews, a good deal of the complaining is about the advice being outdated and about the grammar and typos, and poor Kindle formatting, and the fact that you can read the letters for free elsewhere.
The book was written in the 80’s; most of the reviews were written in 2013 when the Kindle version was released by his son, Bond. A couple of comments, if you purchase a book some 20 years after publication it seems reasonable to expect it to be somewhat outdated. When it was published on Kindle, Bond specifically said he had left it as is. They were handwritten, from prison, in spurts when he had time – it doesn’t seem surprising there would be some grammatical anomalies. And finally – if you’re pissed that you paid for something you could read for free elsewhere – why didn’t you go read it for free elsewhere!
Goodreads
2295 ratings – 4.18 average and 179 reviews – 79% 4’s and 5’s.
Several of the 5-Star reviews call this the best copy writing book ever written. I think that’s a bit overstated.
Edit
Books, Non-fiction
When I’m struggling with posting my work, I always remind myself that no one is reading it anyway – so I can write anything I want. Spend any amount of time reading online advice and you come away with “post something every day”.