Scientific Advertising circa 1923

David Szetela and Clix Marketing have a blog from early January that has a download link for a public domain book called Scientific Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins. The book was first published in 1923--long before online advertising.

Hopkins's book is short by todays standards (57 pages) but it's filled with classic advice about topics such as salesmanship, headlines, samples, pricing, content, ad copy and much more. His thoughts apply to online marketing and sales and is well worth your reading it. I've not finished reading it yet, but the last paragraph of Chapter 3 is worth pondering:

People can be coaxed but not driven. Whatever they do they do to please themselves.
Many fewer mistakes would be made in advertising if these facts were never forgotten.