The late-summer reading list for marketers
Summer is the only quarter where a marketer’s calendar has actual white space in it. Before September fills it back up with Q4 planning, here’s a reading list short enough to finish between swims — seven links, roughly one per lake day.
Fair warning: every link below goes through vtn.li, our own shortener. That
way you get the reading, and we get to watch the click stats like proud
parents. Everybody wins.
The classics (reread them, they hold up)
1. 1,000 True Fans — Kevin Kelly → vtn.li/sr-fans
The essay that quietly explains why a niche Swiss SME with 1,000 real fans beats a loud brand with 100,000 indifferent followers. Ten minutes that will make your next budget meeting easier.
2. Do Things that Don’t Scale — Paul Graham → vtn.li/sr-scale
Technically a startup essay, functionally a permission slip to hand-write onboarding emails and personally thank your first fifty customers. Scale is September’s problem.
The positioning & copy shelf
3. Obviously Awesome — April Dunford → vtn.li/sr-positioning
The book site for the best positioning method going. If your product page starts with “The all-in-one platform for…”, treat this as an intervention.
4. Marketing Examples — Harry Dry → vtn.li/sr-examples
Short, visual teardowns of real marketing that worked. The ideal beach format: each one is a two-minute read, and you’ll steal at least three ideas.
5. How to write well — Julian Shapiro → vtn.li/sr-writing
A no-nonsense writing handbook. Pairs well with a deck chair and the quiet realisation that your last newsletter had three adverbs too many.
The “fine, one work-adjacent one” section
6. The Beginner’s Guide to SEO — Moz → vtn.li/sr-seo
Still the cleanest SEO primer around. Read it once, then spend autumn not falling for “we’ll get you to #1 on Google” cold emails.
7. Copyhackers → vtn.li/sr-copy
Conversion copywriting, taught properly. Bookmark it for the first rainy Sunday — which, in Switzerland, is never far away.
And the meta-joke, because we sell branded short links: this whole list is a live demo. If you want your own reading lists, campaigns and newsletter links to carry your domain instead of ours — with clean, cookieless analytics — start free.