Prepare To Be Patronised! (Write to Sell: The Ultimate Guide to Great Copywriting - Andy Maslen)

Member Name: louiseypees

Product:	Write to Sell: The Ultimate Guide to Great Copywriting - Andy Maslen
Date:	20/10/08 (108 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Smug, patronising tone

Disadvantages: Solid basic information - would be good if you knew nothing already

Recently I decided that the time had come to start supplementing my income. As good as dooyoo is, I had bigger plans: freelancing. As a marketing person who does a fair amount of copywriting, it was fairly easy to decide what I wanted to go solo in - er, copywriting. Before taking any kind of plunge, I got myself some books from Amazon to hone my skills and make sure I wasn't about to make any huge mistakes. One of those books was Write To Sell - The Ultimate Guide To Great Copywriting.

Having just finished the great "Can I Change Your Mind" by Lindsay Camp (which I've reviewed - plug, plug), I was expecting big things from this book. It certainly made big claims. It had the word "Ultimate" in the title, for a start - it's rare that claims come much bigger than that. And so I settled down to read.

This book is structured really simply. It starts off giving some pointers on how to plan your writing, goes on to give some tips on doing the writing itself, and then finishes with some insight into what is needed after you've finished writing to polish your work.

Throughout the book there are exercises and questions designed to make you use the skills laid out in each section.

I wasn't a big fan of this book. The points covered were all very good and relevant, but I didn't find Maslen's writing style engaging... which isn't great for someone who is tutoring in writing. I also found the use of exercises a little cheap and patronising. Maslen talks about the importance of not talking down to your reader and then fills the book with exercises which read like a GCSE revision guide. It all seems a little bit ironic.

Maslen uses a lot of acronyms to try and tutor the reader. This too feels a little juvenile. I don't mind an acronym on occasion, but in the planning phase of the book he fires a few at us in quick succession and it feels a little contrived. I'm a grown-up now. I don't need to remember clever little acronyms. I don't want to do exercises. I'm not going to get tested on the book - something like this should be something to dip in and out of, not a textbook. I felt patronised for a lot of the time I spent reading this.

Another gripe is that Maslen is, at times, verging on boastful and smug when he talks about himself and his career. He repeatedly mentions his "Maslen on Marketing" newsletter, which stops being funny after a while. At the end of the book, he shows off the readability statistics for the whole thing, which is unnecessary and very self-congratulatory: we've already been shown how to do this ourselves, telling his reader how well-written his book is just seems smug to me. There's a bit of preaching to the converted about it all - why tell people who have already shown enough interest in your book to read it right to the end how good it was? Surely if it was that good, they would already be convinced?

I found his examples of "good" copy to be somewhat dated and aggressive. Obviously this is a man who does make a living from copywriting, and I have no doubt that his services are in demand, but there is something a little condescending about his copy. I know pretty well myself that it is possible to write readable sales copy without talking down to people, but from what Maslen shows us of his preferred style in this book, he isn't good at giving his reader much credit. There is nothing engaging about the way he writes anywhere in the book - in the main text or in the examples he gives.

Having said all that, if I hadn't already read "Can I Change Your Mind", I probably would have taken more from this book. The basic tips he gives are good ones, but they're no more in depth here than in "Can I Change Your Mind", even though "Write To Sell" is meant more for people who want to make a living out of copywriting. Unfortunately "Write To Sell" is a less likeable way of getting your hands on the same information you could get elsewhere.

Summary: Not quite the "ultimate" guide...