Most people don’t read.

Unless you count the Chinese takeout menu or the Netflix movie descriptions.

The people who do read are intellectually curious, they come from interesting backgrounds and have different reasons for spending time buried in their books.

It’s everything from personal development, to exploring fantasy worlds, to trying to grow your company.

So naturally, the people you meet in bookstores and libraries are a different breed than you would meet anywhere else in the world.

A subscriber pointed this out to me last week and also offered a bit of a challenge.

She said “Interesting people frequent those bookstores, you can learn as much from them as from the books. You're an observer, bet you'd learn tons, or have fodder for upcoming emails.”

And that’s when I remembered a challenge that I always wanted to do.

The rules are simple:

1. Go to a bookstore or library
2. Pick up a book you haven’t read
3. Flip to a random page
4. Use the information and story on that single page to write an email to your audience that sells your offer.

This is the ultimate test for a content creator. So it’s time to put my money where my mouth is.

I went to Half Price Books to sell some old books and while I was there, I took a picture of 4 book covers and 4 pages (one from each book.)

Here's a list of the books and links to the content I wrote for each one

• The Power Look, by Egon von Furstenberg. The cover looked retro and I figured I could find a reasonable lesson within the fashion niche that applied to business.
• Edgar, by Edgar Martinez. I am a Seattle Mariners fan and grew up watching Edgar play. He is one of the best players of all time. This figured to be an easy one since I’m familiar with him.
• Galileo’s Error, by Phillip Goff. This is a neuroscience book, I think… But I got lucky and pulled a page that will be fun to write about.
• Chaos, by Sara Fine. After locking in the first three, I needed more of a challenge. So I grabbed a fiction book. It’s the final book in a trilogy that I know nothing about and, to be honest, this one is going to be tough.

If you want to join in, I’d be interested in reading what you write.

Share it with me via email.

Check,

Andrew Ryder