Write It Right!
What authors can learn from the great copywriters
Vol. 5, Issue No. 18 | September 15, 2009 By Denny Hatch
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In The News
Clash in Alabama Over Tennessee Coal AshUNIONTOWN, Ala. - Almost every day, a train pulls into a rail yard in rural Alabama, hauling 8,500 tons of a disaster that occurred 350 miles away to a final resting place, the Arrowhead Landfill here in Perry County, which is very poor and almost 70 percent black.
—Shaila Dewan, The New York Times, Aug. 29, 2009
When I started reading The New York Times on Sunday, Aug. 30, my brain kept bumping into articles that were making no sense.
Was the problem myself, having just turned 74? Or was it poor writing and editing on the part of the Times.
After careful analysis, I discovered that editorial excellence in The New York Times has deteriorated right along with its finances.
Poor writing in print media—memos, white papers, letters, reports, newspapers and books—is relatively harmless.
“Today’s $1 newspaper is tomorrow’s birdcage liner,” wrote Doc Searls, blogger, columnist and co-author of “The Cluetrain Manifesto.”
But if our written material—riddled with mistakes and non sequiturs—makes it to the Internet, it can plague us all the way to the grave and beyond.
A Book Proposal Rejected
Several years ago, I wrote a book proposal: “WRITE IT RIGHT: What Authors Can Learn from the Great Copywriters.”
I sent it off to a couple of publishers and got turned down. A top editor at W. W. Norton & Co. sniffed, “There’s nothing our authors can learn from copywriters.”
With 400,000 titles a year being published, I said the hell with it. The pitch sits with a number of other projects-in-waiting in my files.
Too bad. Copywriters—especially the great direct response copywriters—know how to push emotional hot buttons, grab readers by the throat and not let go until action is taken. For example, here’s the late Bill Jayme’s lede for his letter that offers a free issue of the newly revamped Fortune:
Dear Reader,
It’s a little thing called success.
It’s no longer having to spell out your name.
Or having to say what company you’re with. Or having to hand out your card. Or having to wait in reception rooms.
It’s commanding a generous expense account, a seat up front when flying, a key to the corporate suite. It’s even wearing a turtleneck to work — and next day, everyone else does.
Success. If you’re determined to carve out a slice of success for yourself, Fortune can help you do it, as nothing else around can.
Takeaways to Consider
- Traditional news stories are created in the “inverted pyramid” format—with a short lead paragraph that describes who, what, where, when and how—enabling the reader to grasp the basics and decide whether or not to continue. Subsequent paragraphs fill in details, from the most important down to the least important. When an inverted pyramid story goes out over the wires or Internet, newspaper editors can pick up as much or as little as they want, depending on the space available. Even if all but the first two paragraphs are lopped off, readers still get the guts of the story.
- All an editor or reader needs to do is eyeball that first paragraph to know what’s there and whether it may be of value.
- The above is a viable concept for memos, white papers, reports, PowerPoint presentations and virtually any other non-fiction writing you create.
- Don't rely on an editor to clean up sloppy prose. The author who has the byline gets the praise or the hisses.
- From my book proposal, “WRITE IT RIGHT: What Authors Can Learn from the Great Copywriters”:
It’s a fact that a simple cover letter, a memo, e-letter, report, newspaper or magazine article, book of fiction or nonfiction had better be very well written—a "grabber"—or it will be ignored. The greatest experts at creating literary "grabbers" are the elite and generally anonymous cadre of highly paid (six- and seven figures a year) advertising copywriters who mobilized the English language and sent it off to sell. This is a book about the art and science of powerful communication techniques. It will be illustrated by dozens of examples of great advertising—direct mail letters and space advertisements that caused people to act. Among them:- Martin Conroy’s "Two Young Men…." letter that brought millions of subscribers to The Wall Street Journal for over 25 years and more than $1 billion in subscription revenue.
- Bill Bonner’s letter for a publication that did not exist—International Living—which was profitable from day one and so successful that he went on to create a $100 million a year publishing empire and purchase two giant chateaux in France. It is still bringing in customers 30 years later.
- "How long should a piece be? The best-known answer to that age-old question is: "As long as it has to be." That doesn’t tell you much, but perhaps it suggests two important criteria: economy and—above all—efficiency. As a sometime angler, I get a better sense of length by remembering a fishing trip to Maine when we used dry flies with barbless hooks. Unless you kept up the tension all the way to the net, you lost the trout. Try it. You should feel the same sort of tension when you write and when you read a letter or anything else. If not ... reel in the slack."
—Malcolm Decker, freelancer. - May I send you FREE a copy of Bill Jayme’s “SUCCESS” mailing package for Fortune? E-mail dennyhatch@yahoo.com. Subject line: Bill Jayme Fortune mailing. I'll send you a PDF along with info about an extraordinary opportunity to acquire the ultimate swipe file—the complete Bill Jayme collection—and Heikki Ratalahti designs—that includes 11 CDs (plus one bonus DVD) containing 210 individual direct mail efforts for 138 publications in PDF format, indexed by category and completely searchable.
Web Sites Related to Today's Edition
Tennessee Coal Ash Story, The New York Timeshttp://tinyurl.com/lbksqd
"The Cluetrain Manifesto"
www.cluetrain.com
Hillary Clinton Film and the Supreme Court, The New York Times
http://tinyurl.com/n22g48
The economist whose writing cures insomnia, The New York Times
http://tinyurl.com/n9ow4r
Bill Bonner's masterpiece for International Living—first written in 1979—that's still around after 30 years
http://tinyurl.com/neya34
Martin Conroy's billion-dollar “Two Young Men ..." letter for WSJ (Go to the end of the story for text of letter)
http://tinyurl.com/mlevp6
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