Short and Sweet Gets the Read

whenever i sit down to write a sales letter, the temptation to muck up the exercise with a page full of words whispers sharply from my shoulder. we all know — or we all should know — that short and sweet gets the read. seeing less to do invites the work to get done. imagine my surprise when a lead singer needed to remind me to keep things succinct and punchy. he wasn’t in the know on his own. he was trained by a friend who worked on the communications team for barack obama’s presidential campaign. brian mazzaferri of i fight dragons writes letters to his fans that contain no more than two sentences per paragraph — and lots of white space. at the end of every letter, there is the lovable red button that reads “buy stuff” — and they do.