How a murderer’s talent for copywriting won him freedom

Next time you open a book on copywriting, I bet you won’t read a more surprising introduction than this one.

Louis Victor Eytinge, the writer of the excellent articles which compose this book, is a life-termer in the state penitentiary at Florence, Arizona.

That sentence greeted me last night when I opened Writing Business Letters which Get the Business – a once-popular series on copywriting that was published in 1914.

All six articles were so good – still valuable to any modern-day copywriter who cares to read them – that I felt no surprise when I learned it was Eytinge’s copywriting talent that ultimately set him free. …read more