Most pretentious & self-indulgent book about marketing design ever written?

Today I am having a sale on my book: “Markauteur” A book the great Dan Kennedy asked if he could buy in bulk to gift to some of his colleagues, and said: “I have fully read MARKAUTEUR. The book is brilliant. I have 11 Post-It'd places, marked to return to, share one way or the other. What is most to be admired, I think, is the transparency. Your book baldly, nakedly explains what you did, do, why and how. I've pretty much shown how my tricks are done my whole career; sold the same plan that l use, but this is rare, a rare kind of courage. Your book is that. The front and back covers are fantastic. Your "dominate the bookshelf" is THE fight of fights I have with some clients and with our members at large. I keep telling them nobody stands in front of bookshelves to admire a thumb-drive. Your presentation of Ogilvy is beautiful and concise.” As far as what it teaches: It reveals the exact methods & strategies I’ve been using for over 22 years to help grow a feening horde of customers & fans inside a visual marketing universe they love to buy from and hate to leave. And before you even ask… no design or software skills are needed. And no special artistic talent is required. Frankly, I never made it past community college art classes, and couldn’t operate Photoshop if my life depended on it. I simply outsource all those things. More: It also talks about the design-side of business World-Building. My elBenbo Press book talked a lot about that from the publishing side. And my Brand Barbarian book talked about it from the branding side. But this book talks about it from the purely visual side. I could drone on and on and on about what I mean by that. But I will let one of the world’s top direct marketing designers (one of the only designers the professor or harsh reality himself Dan Kennedy lets anywhere near his own direct marketing projects, from what I understand) Kia Arian tell you from her experience designing nearly all all my book covers, logos, graphics, etc. Hit it, Kia: === Beyond the designs themselves, what is so cool about your covers is that it takes your "world building" to a new level that few, if any, people have done. They go beyond world-building in the D&D sense... they actually, visually, tangibly create YOUR world. Sort of like vision boards, meditation, or intention-setting, but going even further and creating tangible space and energy for the life you are building. It ventures into the woo-woo, Maltzian principles, but they are powerful mindset keys that can transform the lives of people who "get it." I suspect you already know this and operate in it...just mentioning it as possibly good fodder for the interview...beyond great design, people want keys to transformation. Book covers designs that help you stand in your future...it puts the world on notice, and creates a picture of what is and is to come. Maybe not for everyone, but for a few, it is exactly what they need and didn't know it. It's a new and completely different class of book cover design where clicks, likes, and sales are merely incidental to the bigger results you get. === She is talking about my book covers specifically above. But it applies to everything else design-related in my business. Even small little things only 10% or less of people will ever notice - like logos, graphics, opt-in pages, websites, the comicbook-style ads (which I have been experimenting with since 2019, and have been doing in “real time” the last couple of years inside Email Players, and will continue to do next year, and the year after that…) I am currently running, and even envelopes I’ve used. But some friendly words of warning: 1. This is the most expensive (and valuable, IMO) book I’ve written yet. (Even pricier than my elBenbo Press book.) 2. Swipers & copycats will probably absolutely hate this book. As will direct marketers who think everything has to be low brow & ugly or snooty designers who turn their noses up at anything that isn’t slick & pretty. 3. It’s obnoxiously pretentious & self-indulgent. Even more-so than my daily emails. And it is only intended for a very small part of my list. Specifically the boys & ghouls eager to get cerebral and go deep, vs the shallow opportunity-seekers who just want to be handed a quick checklist of hacks in a Twitter listicle or low information tricks in a PDF they’ll proceed to do nothing with. Finally: I am selling it at a substantial discount until Sunday 8/18 at midnight EDT. After that, it goes back to being prohibitively expensive for most folks. This is also by far the most “personal” book I’ve ever written. It goes into places I’ve never dared tread before. And I legitimately don’t think most people will be willing to do the massive amount of thinking, planning, strategizing, and creative thinking/problem-solving the book demands in order to implement it. In other words: It’s not for newbies, those with no real business, or anyone looking for hacks. You will need a legitimate business, a list, and offers to use the info. It’s wholly inadequate from anyone else. All right enough caveats. Here is what to do to get in on this: 1. Read every single word at the URL below to make an informed purchase 2. Buy it before Sunday 8/18 at midnight EDT to get it at the discount 3. Use code POMPOUS at the checkout (Make sure you see the price change before entering your info) Here’s the link: [( (Use code POMPOUS at the check out to get the discount) Ben Settle P.S. Here is a review for the book that came in from Email Players subscriber Hannah Costales: === Okay I just have to say this. But man. I absolutely love Markauteur. Each page is literally filled with gold and I’m going to be going through this book over and over again. I already got a ton of ideas to implement and I’m not even done with it yet. I’m so excited. It’s like, reading your book made it feel like my mind was on steroids. I had to stop reading just to capture all these ideas. The part where you talked about writing comicbook style-ads or videos is something I’m really keen to apply. But I might have to do to a twist on it (not sure what yet) in case a bunch of people reading your book starts doing them too. Anyway. Thanks Ben! This has been one of the most valuable and most exciting books I’ve ever read This email was sent by Ben Settle as owner of Settle, LLC. Copyright © 2024 Settle, LLC. All Rights Reserved. No part of this email may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from Settle, LLC. Click here to [unsubscribe]( Settle, LLC PO Box 1056 Gold Beach Oregon 97444 USA