Dan Kennedy is considered one of the legendary direct marketing and copywriting experts. Mr. Kennedy is the author of over a dozen books and informational products. It’s no surprise that this book was recommended to me from several sources. This book with originally written in the in the 80s or 90s and was recently updated to include a chapter on Internet copywriting. Let’s see what I found after reading this book.

What I liked:

I reviewed the updated version and I like the fact that Mr. Kennedy doesn’t vary from his previous version a lot. This is still a book aimed at teaching you how to write a basic sales letter for off-line businesses.

While this may turn off some online marketers, it would be a big mistake to dismiss this book as not being relevant. You see, Mr. Kennedy does a great job of breaking down any sales letter to its most basic parts.

So while he doesn’t talk about auto responders, HTML, and other web-based stuff Kennedy does teach you the basic parts of any sales letter. And it’s those parts that always appear regardless of what media is being used.

Dan covers each part of the sales letter in a separate chapter. So you get a lot of detail on writing each section. Quite simply, Mr. Kennedy teaches you how to build a sales letter like you are stacking blocks.

There is one chapter about writing sales copy for your web site, which was written by the late Corey Rudl.

What I didn’t like:

It’s hard to find fault with this book because it offers solid content for tiny price. I enjoyed this book and even loaned my copy to a family member, who wanted to start learning the basics of writing copy.

If Mr. Kennedy ever decides to do another edition of this book here would be two suggestions. I would make for additional material.

First, it would be very helpful, if he gave some type of basic headline bank for the readers to use as a basic headline template. Second, some additional information on web site related copywriting like writing email copy would be good addition.

The bottom line:

If you are looking to learn the basics of writing a long copy sales letter that teaches you the correct structure to use, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better book than “The Ultimate Sales Letter”.

This is a great book for beginners and deserves a spot on the reference library of more experienced copywriters. In fact, for people new to writing copy, I highly recommend this book as one of the first (if not the first) resource you study.

Review of The Copywriters Handbook By Bob Bly, 2nd edition

Bob Bly is a veteran direct marketer, copywriter, and author of over 50 books. This book was recommended to me as being “must reading” for any aspiring copywriter. It was written during the mid-1980s, before the Internet became a factor. Let’s see what I found after giving this book an in-depth read.

What I Liked:

This book could be loosely divided into two parts. The first part is on learning how to write effective sales copy, including direct mail and advertisements. The second part is on working professionally as a copywriter. I’ll review each section separately.

Let’s talk about learning how to write copy first. In the chapter on creating a sales letter, I really liked how Mr. Bly breaks down each part of a sales letter. Then, he explains what needs to be included in each section in order to make it powerful and compelling. It literally creates a template for the novice to follow and create a sales letter in the correct order – like stacking blocks on top of each other.

The chapter on headlines was also quite information packed. I particularly enjoyed how Bob explained when he would recommend using different types of headlines.

Personally, my favorite chapter was actually in the second part of the book. That chapter was on working as a copywriter professionally on your own. Mr. Bly goes into great detail about how to set up a fee schedule, what usual fees are (at the time of the book being published), what you need to start your own copywriting business, and more. The “get realistic” moment comes when you read about both the good points – and the bad points – of being a self-employed copywriter.

What I Didn’t Like:

Originally written in 1985, The Copywriters Handbook was published before the Internet became a worldwide trend. So there is no mention of writing copy for the online world or the importance of your own website as a professional copywriter.

Hopefully, Mr. Bly will decide to update this book sometime in the future.

The Bottom Line:

It’s a bit dated in spots, but the content is top-notch. The Copywriters Handbook will give you a lot of great information in reaching your goal of writing great sales copy.