Robert Collier - The Robert Collier Letter Book

But remember, in the great book of Time there is but one word "Now" so drop your card in the mail now.

Very truly yours,

For No. 4 we used a large mailing folder, recapitulating all the arguments of the three letters and containing only a post card.

No. 5 is going to be a surprise to many people. It is long—oh, how long! Four whole pages of closely type-written stuff! Who would ever read it? Yet people did, evidently, for from a low point of 1 percent on the previous circular, and 11 1/2 percent on No. 3 letter, the orders jumped up to 2 percent! And all efforts we tried, to make a sixth or seventh or eighth follow-up pay, were practically fruitless. So we called this our "mopping-up letter" and filed away the leads. Here is the letter. Only a post card went with it.

A Saving to You of $413.05

Brentano's, the largest retail Booksellers in the World, quote these 418 works in even the cheapest editions and bindings at $4792.05.

THE LOWEST PRICE AT WHICH THE HARVARD CLASSICS will ever be sold has now been reached in the new Silk Cloth Edition, costing only one-eighth the price of the original sets.

I have put aside one hundred sets of this edition for the specific purpose of FREE EXAMINATION. This letter is your opportunity to examine one of these hundred "Free Examination Sets" in your own home.

It is the final bedrock price to you, and IT HOLDS GOOD FOR ONLY A SHORT TIME LONGER. I write you because, with all that you have heard and read ABOUT the Five-Foot Shelf of Books, you have never yet seen them. You have never yet had the privilege I now offer you of actually handling the volumes, reading in your own home one or two of the 418 masterpieces, proving to your own satisfaction the wonderful completeness of the 76,000-word index, surprising yourself that fifty books so well made and so serviceably bound can be sold AT SUCH A PRICE.

Just read the extract quoted below from letter from the Manager of Brentano's, the great retail booksellers, whose main office, you know, is at the comer of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-seventh Street, New York City:

"We are returning herewith your list of items made up from the Five-Foot Shelf of Books. This list of books embraces about 300 authors and their works.

"The same can be supplied in regular editions in cloth binding for $472.05, with the exception of about fourteen to twenty authors which were published during the 14th to the 18th centuries and exist only in very rare editions and very costly. Same can only be had for reference in European Libraries, as copies are seldom found in the open market."

Their itemized quotations are exceedingly interesting. Volume 1, for instance, which contains Franklin, Wolman, Penn, can be duplicated in three little volumes of Everyman's Library at 50 cents each or only $1.50 (Harvard Classics price $1.10). But volume 8, containing the nine greatest Greek Dramas by Aesehylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, would cost $10.60 to duplicate, while volume 39, which contains some of the most prized possessions of the British Museum and the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, has rarely been reprinted and is almost unobtainable now except in the Five-Foot Shelf of Books AT ANY PRICE.

First, therefore, I should like you to satisfy your own curiosity as to how it is possible for us to manufacture and sell $472.05 worth of literature in uniform binding, with footnotes, glossaries, introductions, etc.—at just one-eighth that price. I should like you to see one of these free examination sets for this reason first.

But it isn't merely of figures that I want to speak to you. I should like you rather to think of the Five-Foot Shelf in terms of TIME, which to the busy modern man is not only money, but is more valuable than money. Look at the Five-Foot Shelf from the standpoint of the time it will save you and your wife and your children.

You have a letter or a paper to write, or a speech to make; some member of your household has a paper for a woman s club; one of the children has a topic assigned at school; some subject is discussed in the newspapers and you want to read up on it; where can the material be found at a moment's notice? Nowhere that I know except in the Index of the Harvard Classics.

Take the subject "Health," for instance, and see what has been prepared for you. This is an actual extract from the Index:

"HEALTH, Antoninus's care of, ii, 197; Burke on pleasure and idea of, xxiv, 36, 38; Carlyle on, xxv, 4234, 435-6; Carlyle on care of, 402-3; Channing on, xxviii, 366-7; Descartes on, xxxiv, 50; Epictetus on care of, ii, 160 (118); Hunt on, xxvii, 307; More on, xxxvi, 213-14, 215; Locke on importance of, xxxvii, 9, 10; Pascal on use and misuse of, xxviii, 374; Pope on, xl, 443; rules of, xxxvii, 10-28; unconsciousness of, xxv, 338-48; Woolman on care of, i, 24445.

"HEALTH, by Pinkney, xxviii, 394-45.

"HEALTH, Here's His in Water, vi, 191.

"HEALTH, Here's to my, vi, 28-9.

"HEALTH, Regimen of, Bacon’s, iii, 85-6.

"HEALTH, to them that’s always, vi, 477."

Remarkably suggestive, isn’t it? So on every one of the other 75,999 subjects you have at your finger tips the information that it would take you hours or even days to gather from scattered volumes.

But neither time nor money is the proper word with which to picture The Harvard Classics. The real word is pleasure, self-satisfaction, the delight of mental growth. Look at one of these hundred free-examination sets from this standpoint. Shut your eyes for a moment and let these 418 friends take you by the hand, carry your imagination away with them. You will travel down the Nile with Herodotus; or roam the Spanish Main with Drake; see the great Grecian dramas in the Ampitheatre of Athens; hear Cicero denounce Catiline in the Roman Senate; follow Cellini through the thrilling intricacies of his dealings with Princes and Pontiffs; stand with Columbus on the Santa Maria as he sees the blue haze which is the new world; see Harvey as he discovers the circulation of the blood.

IMPORTANT! The Price of The Harvard Classics will soon be advanced.

Paper, Ink, and Binding have more than doubled in cost since the material used in the manufacture of these books was bought. Our present stock will last only a short time longer, and then our prices must be increased to keep pace with the costs.

Take advantage of the present low costs by mailing your card NOW.

* * * * *

Nothing remarkable about any of these letters, is there? You have seen as good or better ones many a time. But they had this virtue.

They brought back what they went after the orders. In the five years I was with Collier’s they sold many hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of books.

Why? Because they set out with a definite goal in mind and they made every word carry them one step nearer that goal. Take letter No.1 as an example. What is its purpose?

1. To winnow out from the mass of readers those few who can be sold the idea of "culture," the value of higher education.

If Dr. Eliot of Harvard were to say to you—To come around to my home tonight. I want to show you some books I believe you'll enjoy; they are interesting, entertaining, yet they will give you all the essentials of a liberal education, even if you can spend only fifteen minutes a day with them."

Can you imagine any start more likely to attract the attention and arouse the interest of a man culturally inclined, who had not enjoyed the benefits of a college education? You know many such men, and you know how many of them feel that they are handicapped through lack of the cultural advantages a college gives. In the back of their minds always is the fear that they are a bit inferior to their college-trained friends. So how they would welcome the idea of a talk with so famous an educator as Dr. Eliot! How they would jump at the idea of a college reading course under his guidance! Therefore how well that idea fitted in with the mental conversation going on in the back of their minds!