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From: Is it true that nice guys finish last? Definitely not - but sometimes the nice guys do take a swift kick in the "family jewels" from time to time. The man in the picture above is none other than "Joe Sugarman." If you've read a magazine, chances are you've read one of his ads. If you've watched late night TV, you've probably seen one of his infomercials. And if you've seen one of his books for sale online, chances are you've witnessed a theft. Listen to this story and I'll tell you ...
Here's how it all began ... "Mark, listen to me: no one will buy one of these - what do you call them? Ebooks?" By 1996 I had been publishing "ebooks" for a couple of years already but the idea hadn't yet caught on. Of course we know now that the medium has become a permanent fixture of the publishing industry, but back then the idea took a lot of resistance. To combat this, I tried to bridge the gap between the print world and the electronic world. A few people caught on to the idea after hearing of the sales success of some of the titles we offered at "Aesop Marketing Corporation" but frankly most of the stuff printed in "e" format was just plain bad. Don't get me wrong - some of it was really good, but when you make it easy to publish, bad literature will flood the market. It's inevitable. To bridge this gap, in 1996 I started making inroads with some offline marketing "gurus" who wrote the classic works of Direct Marketing. It took a while for these guys to come around and get on board, but eventually we had some great success with them. In 1999 it started to really take off. Starting with Dr. Joe Vitale, a number of the great legends of offline marketing started publishing titles with us. Soon thereafter we bagged a special "whale." Read on ... Joe Sugarman was a guy I respected greatly. Listen ... If you think you've ever dealt with adversity, you should hear some of the tales of the business thrashings this guy has taken. If you ever get a chance to hear him talk about his "Batman Credit Card" fiasco (he tells it in his books), stop everything and listen. So, do I want you to feel sorry for him? Hardly - this man has also had some astounding successes as well. His "BluBlocker" sunglasses make him millions of dollars every year. He owns homes in Hawaii and Las Vegas. He is living a dream very few dare to dream. See, he was able to take some tremendously tough adversity and turn it into world-class success. That is what impressed me the most. But here's what makes this more than just a "guy takes bad situation and makes good" story ... His books are good. Well, actually no ... No, "good" doesn't do it justice ... Yeah, maybe this is a better way of putting it ... He has written some of the real honest-to-goodness classics of direct marketing that need to be on the shelf of any person serious about making money. Period. If you don't have at least one of his books your library is incomplete. I'm sorry, but it's true. This guy is fiendishly clever. He is a former CIA agent and behind that innocent-looking smile is a Tasmanian Devil of a brain working overdrive. But strangely he doesn't keep these ideas to himself. I have no idea why he shares his secrets with the world. He is actually making money doing marketing, and unlike most marketing teachers, he's so successful with his practice that he doesn't need the money from the "preaching." In fact, I'm pretty sure that the money he makes from selling books about marketing is about 0.0001% of his total income. If that! So, why does he do it at all? I really don't know. I have a theory, though ... I've never asked him directly, but after talking to him and seeing the joy he got from helping people out at my seminars, I think it's because he's just a genuinely good guy. So, what is this terrible injustice done to this good man, you ask? Well, a long time ago - one of those direct marketing legends I brought into the world of e-publishing was none other than Joe Sugarman. We took one of what I consider to be Joe's best two books, Triggers, turned it into electronic form, and started selling it through our army of affiliates and other various means. The book did quite well. It was one of our top-sellers up until the point where I sold that part of my business to my good friends at Nitro Marketing (who is carrying the torch of Triggers and some other great classics to this day). After I sold off my business, I decided to turn in my hat as an "Internet Marketing Guru" and while pursuing some philanthropic work and the writing of a few books, I did a bit of consulting for clients on the side. Two years passed and I kept in touch with Joe from time to time. Mostly just to say hello and catch up. I had all but forgotten about the publishing I did for him back in my other life, but then out of the blue I got this email from a good friend ...
What I found at the site shocked me. Someone was selling a downloadable version of Joe's Triggers, and I was pretty sure Joe had not given those rights to anyone but me (and then later to Nitro Marketing). I contacted Joe and he confirmed this fact. I enlisted the aid of a special group of friends I call the "Spook Squad" and they went out on a clandestine fact finding mission. What we uncovered was shocking: 1) A Direct Rip-Off The copy of Triggers this person was selling was a direct rip off of the old Aesop version. They simply took the HTML of the web version of the book, slapped it into a PDF file, and called it their own. They didn't even bother to take off the Copyright notice from Aesop Marketing Corporation! Amazing. 2) It Wasn't Just an Isolated Case As we began to dig, we found that there were possibly hundreds of sites selling the bootlegged copies of Triggers. 3) Not Just "Resale Rights" but ... We thought we'd be able to track down the culprit selling resale rights, but it wasn't that simple. When we found who we thought was the source, we found that this person unwittingly "purchased" the resale rights illegally. We then found that someone had begun issuing "Master Resale Rights" and the right to give away "Master Resale Rights." This was way bigger than we'd ever imagined - it was everywhere! Most of the people selling the book simply didn't know better. How could they? Intermixed, however, we did find a rather seedy underbelly of plagiarists and rip-off artists. What a mess! Joe has hired a lawyer to fight this and the Spook Squad has helped shut down a lot of the offending sites, but we need your help. Help Us "Bring the Smack Down" ... To track down all of the sites selling Joe's book illegally would take a long long time. However, with your cooperation, I think we can do it. Listen, Joe Sugarman is a man who has helped a great many people succeed in business. He does not deserve this. I want to make this right for Joe, and I want your help. All I ask is that you take a few seconds of your time to do 3 things: Step 1. Tell 3 People About This Site With the help of even a few people we'll be able to track down the remaining sites selling Joe's work illegally. Step 2. Purchase a Legitimate Copy of Triggers: 30 Sales Tools you can use to Control the Mind of your Prospect to Motivate, Influence and Persuade. Hey, you need this in your marketing library anyway. 3. Report to Us Any Sites You Find Selling Triggers Illegally If they are selling an electronic version of Triggers and they're not Nitro Marketing or one of Nitro's affiliates, it's an illegal copy. (NitroMarketing sells the electronic version of the book legally at psychologicaltriggers.com) Look, this kind of thing needs to stop somewhere. If we band together and make an "example" out of Joe's book I imagine a lot of would-be plagiarists and copyright-infringers will get the message. We're not just helping out a great guy, but we're also helping the e-publishing industry to regulate itself. If we don't, the government will do it for us ... Step 1
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