Best Copywriting Book?

When it comes to web copywriting, I loved Michael Fortin`s "The Death of a sales letter". This is a must read if you haven`t gotten your hands on it yet.
And it`s free! :-)

For online its the book "Power Copywriting For The Internet" By Bob Sterling, by a FAR margin the best Ebook you can buy.

That said, I strongly recommend you go physical course instead. If I could only buy one book it would probably be The Adweek Copywriting Handbook due to its comprehensiveness or Breakthrough Advertising.

For just starting out the Adweek Copywriting Handbook or Bob Sterlings book is your best bet. Breakthrough Advertising is written assuming you have read practically everything else first.

If I were starting out and just needed one book I would probably get Sterlings book, because its so step by step. If I wanted to become a killer copywriter I would get Sugarmans book because it goes into more abstract concepts that you need to be aware of but its not as easy to implement.

Lol I didnt see your post until after I made my post. We must of made them at the same time. I guess great minds think alike. ;D

Hi, thanks for the suggestions, keep em coming

Have now read death of the salesletter and am nibbling my way through Gary Halbert's stuff. Tried to find the other 2 books mentioned but didn't like the $97 price tag on one, wasn't too sure about the site for the other. Will come back to them after a bit more Halbert nibbling.


B.

PS Just did a search for Lenny Eng. I dunno, maybe I'm fussy but I spot one serious slip-up and I grow wary and hit the back button.

"So what did he do? Well he went out and did what most people did. He went out and bought everything he could on website copywriting.

He spent thousands of $ dollars on research... from low priced ebooks to high priced seminar tapes and manuals. I studied the works of some of the biggest names in advertising!"

The copywriting for his own book and he screws up 3rd person perspective with a typo..

Mmm.

The book may be good but I wouldn't hire someone who makes such a basic error and worse, never gets round to spotting it.


B.

You are truly bewildered my friend. You've found a reseller's
site, not Lenny's site - and read the copy of somebody who
bought the resale rights to the book and for some reason
wrote his own salesletter for it.

Loren, is this the proper page?

Confessions of a Website Copywriter

That book of Michael Fortin (I forgot the title) is a good read and a must have for budding internet writer.

Cheers for that find Tekstar, am currently reading it..




B.

Well it came with 4 audio interviews too

Actually it was mainly down to my slow internet speed. I tried 3 times earlier to get this forum to load so I could get your email address, as I'd deleted the notification email. Paypal loaded OK, Yahoo was OK but this forum was just hanging. Not the forum's fault, my miserable Borneo internet connection. Sometimes certain sites just don't work for me, including my own.

I clicked the order button to see if Clickbank would load OK and it sprang up near instantly.

If it helps I do feel guilty

Regarding the 2nd book, at this stage a single step by step book is probably what I need most. I did actually study this stuff before, many years ago, and got information overload and need a solid refresher, not the overload thing again.

Am about 1/3 through it at present, though the actual steps will take a lot longer. Am also reading, in paperback, "Rich Dad Poor Dad", an old classic I read years ago but having spotted it in Borneo of all places am reading again.

Well I'm a happy bunny, thanks for all the replies and to those who didn't get a thank you thingy I tried but there seems to be some limit to how often that button works?

Hope the thread keeps going though...



B.

There's Corey Rudle, Joe Vitale, Audri Lanford, Marlon Sanders and someone else.

I've listened for a few seconds of each to ensure downloaded OK. Sound quality isn't great but you can hear it.

The book does tend to follow the "tell em what you're gonna tell em, tell em, tell em what you told em" format, which is a bit wasteful, plus a third of the page is helpfully blank for writing notes, so perhaps more like 50 pages of meat rather than the 150 or so described.

Seems useful stuff though and the kind of slap round the head I needed


B.

I found "Confessions of a Website Copywriter" to be very helpful.

Bob Serling and Gary Halbert have already been mentioned, but SPECIAL mention needs to be made of Dr. Harlan Kilstein's copywriting. Now there is a guy I for one am watching very, very closely

Regards!
Riccardo

By far the best copywriting book is Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz. And I've read more than a few.

This book is NOT a beginner's book though and some people may think
it too academic, but this should be REQUIRED reading for anyone in
copywriting.

Here are my other favorites: (Not all directly on copywriting.)

The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan s. Kennedy

Advertising Secrets of The Written Word by Joe Sugarman

The Copywriter's Handbook by Robert Bly

Ogilvy On Advertising by David Ogilvy

Confession of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy

Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples

Web Copy That Sells by Maria Veloso

Persuasive Online Copywriting by Bryan & Jeffrey Eisenberg

Words That Sell by Richard Bayan

Phrases That Sell by Edwards Werz & Sally Germain

Net Words - Creating High Impact Online Copy by Nick Usborne

Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini

On Writing Well by William Zinsser

The Elements of Style by Strunk & White

The Well-Fed Writer by Peter Bowerman

How I Raised Myself From Failure To success In Selling by Frank Bettger

Ziglar On Selling by Zig Ziglar

Masters Of Advertising by J. George Frederic

Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins


-Ray Edwards

I will give you the two the took me from an immigrant who couldn't speak english over a decade ago to writing copy for a Dan Kennedy Platinum Member.

1. The Gary Halbert Letter (Think someone had the link above)
2. Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy.

My Buddy Ryan who I met at last years Glazer-Kennedy info. summit had an amazing story. He was a UPS truck driver who made something like 10k in the first 6 month's then read the ultimate sales letter book and went on to make $150k the last 6 month's of the year. Now he writes for Agora and he's last commision check he showed was for over 61k in one month. Not BAD.

Anyways, start with those two and remember to just write write write and write some more. hope this helped

The best single book ever written about copywriting? Vic Schwab's "How to Write a Good Advertisement." It's about $15 at Amazon.

Johnny

Thanks for recomending these books

Get The Wizard Of Ads Trilogy by Roy H. Williams as well as Accidental Magic.

These books will expand your mind more than anything you could possibly read when it comes to creating creative copy that sells.

These books are little known to almost all online copywriters and are extremely slept on. Check them out.

Chris