12 lessons Jim learned about copywriting:
- Echoes are not fine: what you want to avoid are "twice told tales" of repeating uncommon words too closely or saying the same thing more than once. Word count matters!
- Sentence construction is also important. You want your blurb to be a rollercoaster, not a pub crawl. People shouldn't "self-pace" when reading your blurb. You want to grab them from the first line and propel them forward. You do this by mixing short and long sentences and transition words like "and, but, while, so." Also, each sentence should contain up to one comma. Two commas is too long, and it probably means you're stuffing too much info into a sentence.
- Finish strong... always put key words and phrases at the ends of sentences and the ends of paragraphs. "But when she finds a corpse in the bathroom, she wonders if she might stay a while in town." vs. "But her visit might extend a few days when she finds a fresh corpse in the shower." This is part of the rollercoaster, always propelling people forward.
- CTA goes at the very end... Have you ever received a long email with a question buried halfway in the text, then you get to the end and forget the question? Tell your audience what to do, then back out like George Costanza. Don't give them a CTA then dilute it with reader reviews or a list of the books in the series.
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Tune in next week to hear the final four lessons!
