People Stop Reading at the Word ___

Yesterday on my mailing list I announced that I would give away 50 copies of my book How to Change the World for ___. And I said I’d give those copies to the first 50 people who checked a certain web page. I clearly explained my offer of a ___ book ONLY applied for those who checked the web page, and who saw a confirmation that they were one of the first 50 people. No confirmation = no ___ book.

On top of that I explicitly asked people NOT to email me with the request “Please send me a ___ book” without following this one simple instruction.

Guess what?

I got dozens of emails from people with the request “Please send me a ___ book” without following this one simple instruction.

The 50 ___ copies were gone within 20 minutes yesterday, but the requests are still pouring in as I’m writing this. Some find even the 6-word sentence too much work, and simply write “One book for me!”

The irony is that I announced my generosity as a favor to those who read my newsletter.

Maybe some people have a different interpretation of “reading”. 8-/

But I learned something! 🙂

I always say I’m learning to be a better writer. And this time I learned that people stop reading as soon as they encounter the word ___, which means I should only reveal that word at the very end of my message.

I don’t know what people expect who just write me “Yeah, give me a book!” But for all my life only the sun came up for free.