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Copy Cocktail*

Solid Information but Bad ToC and Annoying Theme

As I have several businesses myself, I am definitely interested in creating better copy, so I was drawn to this book. The author does have enthusiasm for writing compelling copy. In this book, she discusses good and bad copy with a lot of examples, both made up and real world. If you’re relatively new to marketing, you will find a lot of useful information that will help you on your path. She even goes into a little about which English rules you can (and should) break and effective use of language in copy. There are lots of numbered lists to give you ideas from topics about figuring out your optimal customer to how to best target them, whether in a headline or on a sales page.

The biggest drawback to this book has nothing to do about its information but its organization. For whatever reason, the author has built up this whole book idea around alcohol and cocktails. I think the metaphor is stretched far too thin and actually becomes a bit tiresome. But it created a bigger problem. To me, the best non-fiction books are very transparent at several points, like the blurb and table of contents. The clear blurb gets me to buy, but well done table of contents not only preframes me for what I’m about to read but can also be the signposts needed when I want to refer back to a particular book topic. It is part of the old “tell him what you’re going to tell him” that is crucial for a non-fiction reader. Unfortunately, the author instead chose to make a table of contents that was more cutesy than practical, with chapter headings that tell you nothing about the content like Mocktail Style Writing and Magic Cocktail Syrups.

That said, I think the book has solid information that can help you with marketing and better copywriting. Just be sure to bookmark the pages that you might want to refer back to because the table of contents will not help you at all in that regard.

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