John Wright, Harry Lorayne, Jose Silva...and 80s Biz-Op.

[GordonJ]

John Wright, Harry Lorayne, Jose Silva...and 80s Biz-Op.

John Wright operated a publishing company out of Santa Monica, CA.

He wrote "The Royal Road to Riches" as well as
"How to Start and Operate Your Own Profitable Business at Home".

He was one of the first to offer PERMANENT PUBLISHING RIGHTS, the forerunner of today's Private Label Rights (PLR).

At the time, most book publishing opportunities were of a Drop Ship variety, and you would get 50% of the cover cost. I participated in several of these as well.

John Wright gave you a certificate, a Copyright License which had a Registered Number in the lower left corner and this gave you permission to reprint your own books, in any format you wanted, as long as you left his copyright sign in small print on the bottom of the cover page of each book. It cost 36 dollars to join.

OR you could order preprinted books in economies for as low as 3 bux each. He also gave you ADS to run in any publication you wanted.
This method was knocked off and was prevelant in the boom times between 1970 and 1984.

In John's program there were 10 books you could publish, using a 5.8 x 8.5 booklet format, you could print these for less than 50 cents each back then.

Next.

Harry Lorayne sold more than 250,000 Hard-Cover copies of his Secrets of Mind Power. I had taken a course of his
back in the late 60s. His course and book, were sold mostly by Direct Response Advertising in magazines.

Great stuff.

Then this

KETSUGO, Unbeatable unarmed self-defense ...

was one of the many martial arts books I had as a youngster. I readily
admit I was both a sucker for the ads and also, it was part of my job working as a "seed" for a local mail order company to order this stuff and track where the name went. I've written about that extensively.


Know Jose?

Jose Silva had 4 laws;
desire,
believe,
expect and
you can't create a problem for someone else.

He built his method upon the work of many corporations of the 1950s, who taught this MANIFESTATION stuff in secret. Although,
people don't write about it much, it was work of Nazi Germany who borrowed richly from Napleon Hill and Wallace Wattles and other new age psychic stuff...

which Russia "confiscated" at the end of the WWII. We got the rocket scientists, they got the mind stuff

(oh we split the Weapons of Mass Destruction, like Lyme Disease which we got).

This was one reason Russia was so far ahead of us in Psychic research during the cold war. Our "mind warriors" came late to the
party.

OK, a couple of years ago in Erie, PA...I sold off what was left of my marketing collection, 3 tables of books which went for a song (not even a dance).

I mention this to open discussion, if anyone wants to discuss their memories and how we all might learn from them about the heyday of Mail Order which ran into the 90s. What were you buying in the 70s adn 80s?

I'm in Ohio and cleaning out what is left of my storage units. Found these works mentioned above and several others I had forgotten about.

NOTHING is for sale.

I think, as of today, I've sold off my entire catalog of work and
all of my library. Nothing but fond memories exist for this stuff.

Every once in awhile some guru comes up with something REVOLUTIONARY, like PLR and we OLD Timers just
sigh and note it is a twist on something we've already done.

But there have been breakthroughs on the Internet...a discussion for another day, perhaps.

I've got maybe 10 days to 2 weeks before I take a break, a hiatus from daily Internet activity and put all my energy into the Square One Workshop center I'll be opening in San Diego later this Fall.

Share if you will, what books, courses, people held a fascination for you in times gone by. I go back to the 50s with mailorder, direct response, salesmanship and over my life have spent a fortune on ordering from
Popular Science/Mechanics, Money Making Opportunities, Entrepreneur, and every publisher out there including, just to name a few...

Melvin Powers, Dean DuVall, Jim Staw, Jerry Buchannan, Joe Karbo, John Wright, Ben Suarez, Hubert Simon...

and scores of others I can't even recall. Maybe you can?

Let's see if we can learn something to apply to today's times from our past.

Game?

Gordon Jay Alexander

PS. My OFF KEY Singing Telegram Service was a result of one of those INSIDER REPORTS by John Chase Revel, founder
scoundrel of Entrepreneur Magazine whom we've discussed in an earlier thread.

PPS http://www.theawl.com/2011/06/the-sh...ed-sea-monkeys

Nice article, found via a Bob Silber post at Warrior Forum Copywriting Forum.