VersaQuill

I’m a sucker for books on copywriting. Sometimes I can resist buying them – but I can never resist reading the descriptions and trying to find a good reason to buy just one more.

Alas, the return on these bibliographic investments is getting smaller and smaller. A lot of the books repeat what I’ve read elsewhere. Worse yet, when I sit down to write an ad, I can’t dredge up even half of the excellent advice I’ve read.

So why am I still tempted to buy them?

First, I keep looking for a way to make it easier to face that blindingly white, terrifyingly blank piece of paper.

Second, I’m very conscientious about giving good value for my services, so I worry that I’ve missed an obvious selling point or forgotten an important piece of information.

Faced with this ongoing problem, I finally decided last year to compile a set of worksheets and checklists to help me collect ideas, organize them, and check the copy. Having such material ready at hand turned out to be such a profound relief to my anxiety-ridden psyche that I decided to offer the material for sale as the VersaQuill Copywriting Workbook. The Workbook is an ongoing project and will be updated periodically. In fact, as I write this, two really, really interesting books are just begging for my attention. (I usually resist buying more of them – not always.)

I’ve posted the table of contents for Part 1 (Generating Ideas) and Part 2 (Writing the Ad) on my website, which includes further information about the Workbook and samples from it.

Have a look and tell me your thoughts: What would you add? What would you delete?

Click here to purchase the Workbook. To be notified of updates to the Workbook and occasionally receive free excerpts, subscribe to this blog (at right) and/or add your name to the VersaQuill mailing list.

(Incidentally, the title of this post is a riff on the title of David Ogilvie’s combination memoir / manual, Confessions of an Advertising Man, which is fascinating reading.)