RH, who has edited a number of my books, recently noted in an e-mail to me, ?Everybody needs an editor!?

Copywriters, magazine writers, newspaper reporters, and book authors published by traditional publishing houses all have editors.

But self-published book authors, e-book authors, e-zine writers, and bloggers usually don?t: what they write goes straight from their PC to the reader, without being vetted by a third party.

I?ve often heard blogging enthusiasts derisively refer to ?edited content? when speaking of traditional publishing.

But is editing bad? I?ve always thought of editing as ?quality control? for the written word. And as a rule, give me good writing over bad any day.

What do you think? Do you prefer having your writing edited? Or left alone?

Would you rather read blogs and other ?unedited? writings? Or magazines and other formats where the text you are reading has passed through an editor?s ?quality inspection??

In his new book ?Irresistible Offers,? Mark Joyner writes:

?One could present a compelling case that marketing is destroying this planet. The average American goes deep into debt buying silly (and sometimes downright harmful) things that he simply does not need. This process has not just pushed the average consumer into debt; it has lowered his values as well.

?When you are bombarded with messages day after day that present a world where selfishness, shallowness, and greed are the ultimate ideals, it?s hard not to start believing that world is your own as well.?

Do you agree? Is marketing sleazy?

And if marketing is indeed sleazy, which marketers are the sleaziest? Direct marketers? Internet marketers? Cigarette companies? Car dealers? Attorneys?

I just wrote a book on using content as a marketing tool ? specifically, how to market your products and services by giving away white papers and other free information offers. The book will be published next month.

Which title do you think is best ? and why?

A. The White Paper Marketing Handbook
B. The Edu-Marketing Revolution

Does sex sell?

Or does sex in advertising have the opposite effect, distracting the consumer from the product?

As reported in NewScientist (8/20/05, p. 6), a new study from Vanderbilt University suggests the latter.

The study found that erotic images stop us from registering and remembering things we see immediately afterward ? for up to 800 milliseconds.

That means when a viewer sees a bikini model in a TV commercial splashing in the surf, he is too distracted to remember the brand of the beer she pulls out of the cooler and holds up to the camera a second later.

What?s your experience? Does sex in advertising really SELL? Or does it just get attention, without making the cash register ring and generating a positive ROI?

The correct answer is “B,” as reported in “Successful Direct Marketing Methods” by Bob Stone, Sixth Edition, NTC Business Books, 1997, page 203.

“Buy one, get one free” outpulled the other offers by 40%.

There are two lessons contained in this test result.

FIRST, you can never say with absolute certainty what is going to work in direct marketing. The only way to determine the winner is through a test.

SECOND, you can ignore those who tell you “free” is overused, hokey, downscale, or whatever.

Smart marketers continue to use “free” because it WORKS — and for no other reason.

Here are three different offers:

(A) Half price.
(B) Buy one, get one free.
(C) 50% off.

One of these pulled 40% more replies than the other two.

Which do you think was the winner? And why?

In an earlier post on this blog, I criticized Google for its plan to scan copyrighted books without permission, calling them ?copyright pirates.?

Now an article in the Record (8/13/05) reports: ?Stung by a publishing industry backlash, Google has halted its effort to scan copyrighted books so the material can be indexed in its search engine.?

However, they are STILL copyright pirates.

The suspension remains effect only until November, giving publishers time to notify Google which copyrighted books they DON?T want scanned.

The Record notes that this scheme ?effectively requires the industry to opt out of the program instead of opting in.?

But wait a minute. That?s CONTRARY to the accepted Internet practice of ?permission marketing,? where the Internet marketer can?t act until I opt in.

So why can Google now copy, scan, and distribute the books I?ve written unless my publisher or I deliberately tell them they can’t?

Also, Google plans to contact the publishers of the copyrighted books only ? not the authors.

But for out of print books, the rights typically revert to the AUTHOR ? so it should be up to ME whether I give Google permission to scan my out of print books.

Right?

Here?s the situation:

You are the marketing manager of a company selling enterprise software for computer security to IT professionals.

Your marketing plan already includes a Web site, e-mail marketing campaign, and trade show exhibits.

In this hypothetical situation, there are two additional marketing tools you can use to promote your product, but you can only choose ONE.

The choice is either publish a series of white papers — or start a blog.

Which would you opt for? Why?