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Daily Archives: August 10, 2013

Copywriting for the Rest of Us

I picked up Copywriting for the Rest of Us free last night and read it this morning. It’s short but useful. Although it’s not targeted specifically at authors, I recommend it to authors who need to write blurbs or queries. In other words, all authors with a book to publish.

Coincidentally, I just read this advice again, in a different source. This book is on copyrighting (writing ad copy), and it’s free on Amazon right now (Aug 10): Copywriting For The Rest Of Us (Marketing For The Rest Of Us)  –  http://amzn.to/19UBYgN

One of the things he says is the “best” way to learn copy is to write out other people’s ads word for word. It both teaches and inspires.

This sounds crazy, but it’s true. I first learned this technique from a book on writing sentences: To actually copy, word for word, a sentence or a scene of a writer whom you admire. The logic: we remember admiring a clever sentence, we remember the way a beautiful passage made us feel, but we forget the mechanics of how it happened. So when we go to copy it, we end up doing a clumsy job.

If you actually copy the sentence/paragraph out word for word, you have intimate knowledge of how it was done, and you are actually “doing” it.

The next step is to copy the form of the sentence but change the content to your own — but keep verbs, adjectives and nouns in place.

I tried this technique with a few of the most beautiful, and to me, emotional scenes from my favorite books, and was amazed at how much the author HADN’T said. One of my problems is overwriting, I think, trying to spell out exactly what the reader should feel… this was not the right approach at all. This method helped me see that in a direct way.

Now, the weird thing is that even though I knew about this method for writing scenes and sentences, I still NEVER thought to apply it to writing blurbs, those book descriptions you put on the back of a paperback or in the book description on Amazon. And yet, I always struggle and sweat to write blurbs. DUH, this is something to practice by cooing other authors. I knew that. At one point. But I forgot. This book on copyright writing reminded me that this same technique is important for all the “secondary” kinds of writing we authors must do — queries, blurbs, reviews, even blog posts.

If you want help writing your blurb  copy good blurbs of good books. If you’re self-publishing, this is really important. I’ve seen many good indie books with horrid blurbs that don’t sell the book at all. If you’re trying to snag an agent and a big publisher, this is also great for practicing query letters, since a query is basically formed around a blurb about your book.

I believe it’s still free, so hurry and grab your copy right now.

You might also want to visit Mike Shreeve’s website. He has lots more on Facebook ads, videos, increasing your rank on social media sites all that juicy promotions stuff that we writers hate but need to learn.  🙂

Five New Facts about the Book Industry

1.  “Online book retail, including ebooks, accounted for 44% of all spending by consumers on books in the U.S.”
2.  “Women increased their lead over men in book buying, accounting for 58 percent of overall book spending in 2012, up from 55 percent in 2011. However, men are bigger hardcover buyers – the only area where their buying outpaces women’s.”
3. “The slowly improving economy has improved the climate for purchasing books. By the close of 2012, 53 percent of consumers said the economy was having no effect on their book buying habits, up from 51 percent at the end of 2011.”
4. “Ebooks continue their steady upward trend, with an 11 percent share of spending in 2012, compared to seven percent in 2011.”
5. “The growth of ebooks varies widely among the different publishing categories with their deepest penetration focused in fiction, particularly in the mystery/detective, romance, and science fiction categories, where ebooks accounted for more than 20 percent of 2012 spending.”

The Art of Elysium

One of the cool things about cinema as an art form is that thousands of artists of all types collaborate together to produce one work of art. If you happen to be in the Pasadena area today, you can come meet some of the artists for Elysium in person.

Elysium is a highly anticipated science fiction film staring Matt Damon. In the year 2154, the very wealthy live on Elysium, a standford torus high-tech utopian metropolis located in orbit around Earth that is free of crime, war, poverty, hunger, and diseases, while everyone else lives on an overpopulated, ruined Earth below. The citizens of Elysium live a life of luxury which includes access to private medical machines that offer instant cures, while the citizens of the Earth struggle to survive on a daily basis and are desperate to escape the planet. Those who maintain Elysium will stop at nothing to enforce anti-immigration laws and preserve their citizens’ lifestyle, even destroying ships that attempt to get there. Come see rare behind the scenes artwork by artists from the production design, storyboards, and visual development team.
Bring your questions for the Q&A session and meet the artists one-on-one as they sign copies of the new Art of Elysium book.

$5 Admission at the door. Seats are limited, standing room available.

Featured Artists:
Scott Kravitz (Lead Animator)
Mitchell Stuart (Concept Artist)

Event Schedule:
4:00PM – 5:00PM (panel presentation)
5:00PM – 5:30PM (Q&A)
5:30PM – 7:00PM (book signing)