Sales and Marketing
Selling, advertising, branding, positioning, pricing and customer service, from classic copywriting to modern growth practice. Read by marketers, salespeople and founders who have to find their own customers.
206 books
Books 206
Claude C. Hopkins · 1923 · Mail-order measurement; the origin of tracked customer acquisition cost.
Everett M. Rogers · 1962 · The adoption curve everyone else borrows from.
David Ogilvy · 1963 · How an agency is actually built and paid.
David Ogilvy · 1983 · The craft, and the agency economics behind it.
Thomas T. Nagle, Reed K. Holden · 1987 · The standard text on value-based pricing.
Byron Sharp · 2010 · Evidence-based marketing: penetration, mental availability, light buyers.
Tim Wu · 2016 · Two centuries of harvesting and reselling human attention.
Robert B. Cialdini
unverified
Vance Packard · 1957 · Motivational research and the first popular backlash against it.
Al Ries, Jack Trout · 1981 · The original argument that the category slot is the asset.
Geoffrey A. Moore · 1991 · Why technology products stall between early adopters and the mainstream.
T2 Being Direct
Lester Wunderman · 1996 · The man who named direct marketing on how its economics actually work.
David A. Aaker · 1996 · Brand equity as an asset with a measurable return.
Frederick F. Reichheld, Thomas Teal · 1996 · Retention economics: why loyal customers and employees drive returns
T2 No Logo
Naomi Klein · 1999 · The anti-sweatshop campaign that reshaped Nike's supply chain.
T2 Why We Buy
Paco Underhill · 1999 · Retail conversion economics observed on the shop floor.
David H. Maister, Charles H. Green, Robert M. Galford · 2000 · How relationship capital converts into billable work.
Dana Thomas · 2007 · The best-known account of LVMH-led mass luxury and outsourcing.
Chip Heath, Dan Heath · 2007 · Why some ideas are remembered and repeated; six sticky attributes
T2 Free
Chris Anderson · 2009 · Cross-subsidy and zero marginal cost; the popular case for free tiers.
T2 Priceless
William Poundstone · 2010 · The psychology of price, anchoring and what people will meter.
Les Binet, Peter Field · 2013 · IPA data on the split between brand-building and activation spend.
Hermann Simon · 2015 · Simon-Kucher's founder on price as the main profit lever.
Jenni Romaniuk, Byron Sharp · 2015 · Extends the empirical laws to new categories and channels.
Clayton Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, David S. Duncan · with Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, David S. Duncan · 2016 · Open Library unreachable this run; title not machine-verified.
Madhavan Ramanujam, Georg Tacke · 2016 · Simon-Kucher's argument that price should be designed before the product.
Bharat Anand · 2016 · Strategy framework for the connections business Netflix built.
T2 Subscribed
Tien Tzuo · 2018 · Zuora's founder on the shift from unit sales to subscriber accounting.
April Dunford · 2019 · Positioning for software that serves one industry rather than everyone.
Thales S. Teixeira, Greg Piechota · 2019 · Decoupling: how entrants steal the profitable step in a customer's chain.
Lawrence Ingrassia · 2020 · Dollar Shave Club, Warby Parker and the DTC assault on incumbents.
Geoffrey A. Moore
unverified
Seth Godin
unverified
J. C. Louis, Harvey Z. Yazijian · 1980 · The classic account of the Coke-Pepsi rivalry.
Roger Enrico, Jesse Kornbluth · 1986 · Insider account: Pepsi's president on the New Coke episode.
Randall Rothenberg · 1994 · One agency account, followed in forensic detail.
Guy Kawasaki · 1995 · Kawasaki on competing through service, speed and irritating incumbents
Robert L. FitzPatrick, Joyce K. Reynolds · 1996 · The first sustained critical analysis of MLM compensation arithmetic.
Adam Morgan · 1999 · Challenger-brand economics against a dominant incumbent.
Teri Agins · 1999 · How fashion became a branded consumer-goods business.
Davis Dyer, Frederick Dalzell, Rowena Olegario · 2004 · Company-commissioned business history by academic historians.
Melody Petersen · 2008 · Drug marketing practices, including J&J's Risperdal and off-label promotion.
Jean-Noël Kapferer, Vincent Bastien · 2008 · The standard analytical text on the LVMH-style brand model.
Ellen Ruppel Shell · 2009 · The externalities of the discount model.
Geoffrey Jones · 2010 · Harvard business historian; sets her brand-building against the whole industry.
Robin Lewis, Michael Dart · 2010 · Preemptive distribution and control of the value chain.
Dan Steinbock · 2010 · Nokia's emerging-market operating model at the turn; Open Library unreachable.
Aaron Ross, Marylou Tyler · 2011 · The outbound-SDR machine that most SaaS sales teams copied.
T3 Blockbusters
Anita Elberse · 2013 · Hit economics that explain Netflix's later spending strategy.
T3 Traction
Gabriel Weinberg, Justin Mares · 2014
Paul Feldwick · 2015 · What agencies are actually selling, and the theories they sell it with.
John Warrillow · 2015 · How to bolt a recurring-revenue layer onto an ordinary business.
Robbie Kellman Baxter · 2015 · Membership as a relationship, not a payment plan.
Aaron Ross, Jason Lemkin · 2016 · The SaaS growth playbook: niche, funnel, hiring cadence.
Donald Miller · 2017
Wes Bush · 2019 · How a free tier is designed to convert rather than merely to attract.
T3 Obsessed
Emily Heyward · 2020 · Brand-building for the modern direct-to-consumer cohort.
Tim Hwang · 2020 · The case that programmatic advertising is a mispriced market.
Robbie Kellman Baxter · 2020 · Retention, pricing tiers and the mechanics of renewal.
Mark H. McCormack · 1984
Robert Miller, Stephen Heiman · 1991
Kevin Lane Keller · 1997
Robert Goldman, Stephen Papson · 1998 · Analysis of the brand-marketing machine at its peak.
Charles L. Decker · 1998 · Distillation of P&G brand-management practice for operators.
Anne T. Coughlan, Erin Anderson, Louis W. Stern, Adel El-Ansary · 2001 · The academic text on channel design, territories and exclusive rights.
T4 Great Ikea!
Elen Lewis · 2005 · Brand history; useful on the retail model, thin on the man.
Keith Ferrazzi · 2005
Michel Chevalier, Gerald Mazzalovo · 2008 · Practitioner text on how luxury houses are actually run.
Geoff Hollister · 2008 · Insider account: Nike's third employee on the running boom.
Mark Jeffery · 2010 · Fifteen marketing metrics and how to hold advertising spending accountable
Youngme Moon · 2010
Andrew R. Thomas, Timothy J. Wilkinson · 2010 · The case against surrendering the channel to big retail.
Jim Stengel · 2011 · Insider account by P&G's global marketing officer.
Dan S. Kennedy, Matt Zagula · 2012
Daniel H. Pink · 2012
Rory Sutherland · 2019 · US subtitle differs; Open Library unreachable this run.
Bertrand Cesvet
unverified
Aaron Ross, Jason Lemkin
unverified
Alexandra Watkins
unverified
Aaron Ross, Marylou Tyler
unverified
Blair Warren
unverified