{"id":115,"date":"2013-08-10T15:53:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-10T15:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bestfantasynovel.com\/2013\/08\/10\/copywriting-for-the-rest-of-us\/"},"modified":"2013-08-10T15:53:00","modified_gmt":"2013-08-10T15:53:00","slug":"copywriting-for-the-rest-of-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/2013\/08\/10\/copywriting-for-the-rest-of-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Copywriting for the Rest of Us"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

I picked up Copywriting for the Rest of Us<\/a> 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<\/a>. In other words, all authors with a book to publish.<\/p>\n

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)\u00a0 –\u00a0 http:\/\/amzn.to\/19UBYgN<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2026 this was not the right approach at all. This method helped me see that in a direct way.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

If you want help writing your blurb\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

I believe it’s still free, so hurry and grab your copy<\/a> right now.<\/p>\n

You might also want to visit Mike Shreeve’s website<\/a>. 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.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[575,577,580],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-write-tips","category-writing","category-writing-craft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}