[01] Hajibah Osman, Academy of Language Studies, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia.

Sales letters or direct mails have been an integral component of business communication under the umbrella of direct marketing, sent to targeted prospective customers based on market surveys. This article attempts to analyze sales letters from one publishing company with regards to its marketing and promotion strategies based on two objectives: to examine the generic structure of these letters in comparison with established structure and to investigate the discursive practices in book publishing and marketing based on the contents of the letters. Results show that while the generic structure is generally similar to existing literature of sales letters, there is a significant difference in the strategies used to realize persuasive communication in the letters from the present corpus. The article also reveals the element of interdiscursivity employed as a persuasive strategy in the letters.

Genre Analysis, Sales Letters, Book Marketing, Persuasive Strategies, Interdiscursivity

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