The Adweek copywriting handbook

What Hacker News says

1. marbanSep 2021
   Read Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again, Ogilvy on Advertising, The Adweek Copywriting Handbook and dive deep into Storytelling. That's the basic toolkit for inventing the persona of a successful artist, and yourself.
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2. matteomoscaSep 2020
   Yesterday I shared a link to one of my blog post about what building a successful company has in common with letting your hair grow for 18 months.

   I got flagged.

   (I think) The reason is that in the story I mentioned a girl/accountant I met at the airport of LAX, with whom I scheduled a business meeting. Then I asked the readers to signup to know what happened at that meeting (SPOILER: nothing).

   I did it because I followed one advise by Joseph Sugarman (famous American copywriter), that I learned reading his renowned book "Adweek copywriting handbook". He uses the same writing technique (with a similar example) in that book, to arise readers' attention.

   In any case I understand the reason why I got "Flagged", and I wanted to say sorry. I still think it's a great post though, so I've re-written it removing the misleading part.

   The title is the same: "The Business Lessons I Learned from Not Cutting My Hair for 18 Months".

   Peace

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3. jsonneMay 2020
   If you want "theory" lookup Bernays and read his books about propaganda. Something more practical is anything David Oglivy has written. For copywriting check out "The Adweek Copywriting Handbook" by Sugarman. Unfortunately, I can't recommend any design specific books as I'm a media buyer and trash at design.
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4. jaworromJan 2018
   "Scientific Advertising" Claude Hopkins

   "Tested Advertising" Caples (4th edition or earlier only)

   "How I Raised Myself from a Failure to Success in Selling" Betger

   "How to Write a Good Advertisement" Schwab.

   "How to Write Sales Letters That Sell" Drayton Bird

   "The Robert Collier Letter Book" - by Robert Collier

   "Tested Advertising Methods" -by John Caples

   "The Lazy Man's Way to Riches" - by Joe Karbo

   "Break-Through Advertising" - by Eugene M. Schwartz

   "Advertising Secrets of The Written Word" by Joe Sugarman

   "Making Ads Pay" by John Caples

   "Web Copy That Sells" by Maria Veloso

   "The Architecture of Persuasion" by Michael Masterson

   "Influence The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini

   "The Adweek Copywriting Handbook" by Joe Sugarman

   "The Elements of Copywriting" by Gary Blake and Robert Bly

   "The Ultimate Sales Letter" by Dan Kennedy

   "Cashvertising" by Drew Eric Whitman

   "Write to sell " it is written by Andy Maslen

   "Influencing Human Behaviour" by H.A.

   "Tested Sentences That Sell" by Elmer Wheeler

   "Unlimited Selling Power" by Moine and Lloyd.

   "Writing for Emotional Impact" by Karl Iglesias

   Bob Bly's "The Copywriter's Handbook"

   "How To Make Your Advertising Make Money" - John Caples

   "The Copywriters Handbook" - Bob Bly

   "The Adweek Copywriting Handbook" - Joseph Sugarman

   "Sales Letters That Sizzle" - Herschell Gordon Lewis

   "Cash Copy" - Jeffrey Lant

   "Magic Words That Bring You Riches" - Ted Nicholas

   "Ogilvy On Advertising"

   "Method Marketing" by Denny Hatch.

   "My First 50 Years in Advertising" by Maxwell Sackheim.

   "The Greatest Direct Mail Sales Letters of all Time" by Richard Hodgson.

   "How To Write Advertising That Sells" by Clyde Bedell

   "Ads That Sell" by Bob Bly

   "Advertising Headlines That Make You Rich" -- David Garfinkle

   "Magic Words" -- Ted Nicholas

   "Robert Collier Letter Book" -- Robert Collier

   "My Life In Advertising" -- Claude Hopkins

   "Bird" - Commonsense

   "The First Hundred Million" by E. Haldeman-Julius

   David Ogilvy's "Blood, Brains and Beer"

   "Confessions of an advertising man"

   "Million Dollar Mailings" by Denison Hatch

   "The Wizard of Ads" trilogy by Roy H. Williams

   "Making Ads Pay" by John Caples

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5. redsymbolJan 2010
   In early 2009, I got sick and tired of my incompetence with sales and marketing, and decided to learn. So I set out to learn, even if it meant sacrificing coding for a while.

   Marketing (and its cousin, sales) has many facets, perhaps surprisingly many, with significant differences among them. Just like compiler implementation requires skills and knowledge different from 3D graphics coding, or secure web development, for example. At the "high end" of the marketing food chain, there are things like public relations. I personally don't know much about that yet.

   Instead, I chose to focus on copywriting. Basically, the art and science of creating powerfully effective ads using only the written word. Often this means writing sales letters, i.e. several-page-long texts that sell something.

   This focus has proven to be a good choice. It gives a very strong foundation that applies to other kinds of marketing and sales. For example, Adwords ads can be viewed as extremely short sales letters.

   You asked specifically about books. Over the course of 2009, I worked through (not just read!) about half a dozen marketing tomes that people had recommended to me. In descending priority, my favorite three:

     * Hypnotic Writing by Joe Vitale
     * The Adweek Copywriting Handbook by Joseph Sugerman
     * Cashvertising by Drew Whitman
   

   If you can read only three books, I'd suggest these, in the order listed. But if you can only read one, Cashvertising might actually be the best for you.

   CAVEAT: Make sure you work through all the exercises the book has - and if it doesn't, invent them! Sugarman's book, for example, has few explicit reader exercises. So after each section or chapter, close the book and write an ad for your product, and/or some other product (real or imaginary), applying and exercising the principles you just learned. Use pen and paper, or better yet, a dedicated notebook. You'll miss out on at least 80% of the value of these books if you fail to do this!!

   Another very good thing to do is to HAND COPY a good sales letter. Do it in long hand, on sheets of paper, with a pen or pencil. Why in the world, you ask? Because it's a powerful, powerful way to drill some of the more subtle advertising patterns into your subconscious.

   Several important marketers - Dan Kennedy is one - famously recommend doing this with 100 long sales letters if you really want to manifest great skill in marketing. I've done about six of them myself, so far. Doing just the first one produced a difference in my skill that was too great to ignore.

   Almost no one will do this, because it's so much work. A good solid sales letter may be ten pages, which takes me about three hours to hand copy. Let me just suggest that it's worth it, and you may want to try it out once to evaluate for yourself. Just make sure you use a GOOD (meaning, highly financially successful) sales letter - you want to make sure you ingrain good habits, not bad ones!

   P.S. Cialdini and Collier are often recommended. Personally, I found less value in them. Cialdini's is good, but very, very mental and intellectual. That can be great for a typical advertising person. But most people reading this (programmers) need to be LESS mental, to grok marketing, not more. Reading even a few pages of Cialdini makes me feel "stuck in my head".

   For Collier, I'm personally glad I took the time to read it, but for most people in your shoes it is probably not the first priority, and IMO not even a "must-read" at all.

   EDIT: fixed formatting and a typo

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6. andrewstuartMay 2018
   OP here.

   I've built TONS of software but have never had any idea how to sell it. Time after time I've built software that goes nowhere because the software was great but I didn't know how to sell it. Eventually I thought NO - I'm not going to build anything else until I work out how to sell. What's the point in spending years learning to write full stack SAAS applications without being able to turn it into income?

   So that's my new mission - work out how to sell, because there's absolutely zero point in writing software if I can't sell it.

   After I heard this interview https://mixergy.com/interviews/blublocker-with-joe-sugarman/ I went and bought Joe Sugarman's book https://www.amazon.com/Adweek-Copywriting-Handbook-Advertisi...

   So here is my first attempt at writing sales copy:

   https://www.selffundyourdreams.com

   I'd love to hear your blistering attacks or kind praise, but mainly I'm just interested to hear your opinion. What do you think?

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