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Books

The Best Books on Copywriting: Must Read for Every Writer (Top 8 of all time)

Copywriting is no longer strictly in the domain of advertising

Once upon a time, in the long gone era that was so well depicted in Netflix’ ‘Madmen’, copywriting, the writing of marketing copy, was a Madison Avenue exclusive and a deep mysterious art in the psychology of persuasion.

Starting with men like David Ogilvy (it was almost always men back then), known as the father of advertising, and Joseph Sugarman, authors of Ogilvy on Advertising and The Adweek Copywriting Handbook, respectively, the established advertising methods and best practices for the creation of powerful advertising and effective copywriting were forged.

Long before the existence of content creators or online content (let alone the internet), America’s top copywriters studied classic copywriting books to elevate the art of copywriting. It became a quest, and a lucrative one at that, to become the best copywriters possible.

Today, with online content exploding in both variety and importance, from blog posts to emailed sales letters, to breakthrough advertising for direct marketing and content marketing, becoming a good copywriter or even a master copywriter is more vital than ever.

This article is a potential start on your journey to that end. Regardless if it is new customers that you seek, or just crafting a good advertisement or perhaps more traffic, likes and follows in social media, the fastest route to learning the best ways to influence people for your online business is to get ahold of these awesome books and dig into the expert advice.

And with these classic titles, there’s no fluff and the content and magical knowledge is as relevant today as it was in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the so-called Madmen era.

Ultimate sales letter or direct marketers dream, breakthrough copywriting awaits

You may have a need to learn the art of copywriting to craft the best titles, sub-heads or ad copy. You may just need a slogan for your personal brand or blog. You may even be considering becoming a successful copywriter in your own right, in order to make a living or even a small fortune selling your skills in this ever growing market.

With content creation being such an exploding area of online commerce, and great copy being so essential for small business owners to global corporations, the quickest way to get the knowledge you need is to take this list of the best copywriting books of all time. Once you dive in you will be able to use them to unlock the ultimate secrets of the written word and apply same to produce seductive web copy for better conversion rates and top flight digital marketing.

Writing copy that’s an easy read, and will focus reader’s minds on your good content, will be enhanced exponentially by the self-created copywriting course that will be the inevitable outcome of absorbing the practical advice and essential reading in these case studies.

A great book can change your life and a step guide toward great sales copy will be an incredibly useful tool and great resource for any new copywriter.

After all, writing well and conveying the right message is based on understanding and internalizing the core principles of good copywriting. We believe that these are the best books to help you do exactly that.

Ogilvy on Advertising

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A candid and indispensable primer on all aspects of advertising from the man Time has called the most sought after wizard in the business. 

Told with brutal candor and prodigal generosity, David Ogilvy reveals: 

How to get a job in advertising, How to choose an agency for your product, The secrets behind advertising that works, How to write successful copy–and get people to read it, Eighteen miracles of research and What advertising can do for charities And much, much more.

Click photo for more on “Adweek Copywriting Handbook“

The Adweek Copywriting Handbook

Great copy is the heart and soul of the advertising business. In this practical guide, legendary copywriter Joe Sugarman provides proven guidelines and expert advice on what it takes to write copy that will entice, motivate, and move customers to buy.

For anyone who wants to break into the business, this is the ultimate companion resource for unlimited success.

Made to Stick

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Made to Stick will transform the way you communicate.

It’s a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures): the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of the Mother Teresa Effect; the elementary-school teacher whose simulation actually prevented racial prejudice. 

Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideas–and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.

Thinking, Fast and Slow

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System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation–each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions. 

Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives–and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Topping bestseller lists for almost ten years, Thinking, Fast and Slow is a contemporary classic, an essential book that has changed the lives of millions of readers.

Copywriting Strategies

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Messaging is the single most important factor in the success of any business or endeavor. This invaluable book will teach you strategies for identifying your target consumer, creating a strong message, and writing powerful copy that connects your message with your audience. 

What sets this copywriter’s handbook apart from other copywriting books:  Copywriting 101–Learn the essentials for crafting persuasive copy, including the Ten Commandments of copywriting, common misconceptions, and writing in the digital age.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

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The foundational and wildly popular go-to resource for influence and persuasion–a renowned international bestseller, with over 5 million copies sold–now revised adding: new research, new insights, new examples, and online applications.

In the new edition of this highly acclaimed bestseller, Robert Cialdini–New York Times bestselling author of Pre-Suasion and the seminal expert in the fields of influence and persuasion–explains the psychology of why people say yes and how to apply these insights ethically in business and everyday settings. Using memorable stories and relatable examples, Cialdini makes this crucially important subject surprisingly easy. With Cialdini as a guide, you don’t have to be a scientist to learn how to use this science.

Persuasive Copywriting

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Enhance your copywriting skills with psychology-driven techniques to create stand out copy that taps into consumer decision making and sells, using this second edition of the ultimate copywriting survival guide for the 21st century – essential to every marketing or creative professional’s bookshelf. With many professionals now developing their skills on the job, it is notoriously difficult to benchmark successful copy.

This book provides a step up for those who already know the basics of writing copy, and are seeking more advanced, psychology-driven techniques to gain the competitive edge. With practical insight into human decision making and consumer engagement, it will inspire the clear-cut confidence needed to create, quantify, and sell stand out copy in a cluttered marketplace.

Never Split the Difference

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After a stint policing the rough streets of Kansas City, Missouri, Chris Voss joined the FBI, where his career as a hostage negotiator brought him face-to-face with a range of criminals, including bank robbers and terrorists. Reaching the pinnacle of his profession, he became the FBI’s lead international kidnapping negotiator. Never Split the Difference takes you inside the world of high-stakes negotiations and into Voss’s head, revealing the skills that helped him and his colleagues succeed where it mattered most: saving lives. In this practical guide, he shares the nine effective principles–counterintuitive tactics and strategies–you too can use to become more persuasive in both your professional and personal life.

Life is a series of negotiations you should be prepared for: buying a car, negotiating a salary, buying a home, renegotiating rent, deliberating with your partner. Taking emotional intelligence and intuition to the next level, Never Split the Differencegives you the competitive edge in any discussion.

Ogilvy on Advertising
The Adweek Copywriting Handbook
Made to Stick
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Copywriting Strategies
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Persuasive Copywriting
Never Split the Difference

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Climate Solutions, News

These energy innovations could transform how we mitigate climate change, and save money in the process – 5 essential reads

Building solar panels over water sources is one way to both provide power and reduce evaporation in drought-troubled regions. Robin Raj, Citizen Group & Solar Aquagrid

Stacy Morford, The Conversation

To most people, a solar farm or a geothermal plant is an important source of clean energy. Scientists and engineers see that plus far more potential.

They envision offshore wind turbines capturing and storing carbon beneath the sea, and geothermal plants producing essential metals for powering electric vehicles. Electric vehicle batteries, too, can be transformed to power homes, saving their owners money and also reducing transportation emissions.

With scientists worldwide sounding the alarm about the increasing dangers and costs of climate change, let’s explore some cutting-edge ideas that could transform how today’s technologies reduce the effects of global warming, from five recent articles in The Conversation.

1. Solar canals: Power + water protection

What if solar panels did double duty, protecting water supplies while producing more power?

California is developing the United States’ first solar canals, with solar panels built atop some of the state’s water distribution canals. These canals run for thousands of miles through arid environments, where the dry air boosts evaporation in a state frequently troubled by water shortages.

“In a 2021 study, we showed that covering all 4,000 miles of California’s canals with solar panels would save more than 65 billion gallons of water annually by reducing evaporation. That’s enough to irrigate 50,000 acres of farmland or meet the residential water needs of more than 2 million people,” writes engineering professor Roger Bales of the University of California, Merced. They would also expand renewable energy without taking up farmable land.

Research shows that human activities, particularly using fossil fuels for energy and transportation, are unequivocally warming the planet and increasing extreme weather. Increasing renewable energy, currently about 20% of U.S. utility-scale electricity generation, can reduce fossil fuel demand.

Putting solar panels over shaded water can also improve their power output. The cooler water lowers the temperature of the panels by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit (5.5 Celsius), boosting their efficiency, Bales writes.

2. Geothermal power could boost battery supplies

For renewable energy to slash global greenhouse gas emissions, buildings and vehicles have to be able to use it. Batteries are essential, but the industry has a supply chain problem.

Most batteries used in electric vehicles and utility-scale energy storage are lithium-ion batteries, and most lithium used in the U.S. comes from Argentina, Chile, China and Russia. China is the leader in lithium processing.

Geologist and engineers are working on an innovative method that could boost the U.S. lithium supply at home by extracting lithium from geothermal brines in California’s Salton Sea region.

Brines are the liquid leftover in a geothermal plant after heat and steam are used to produce power. That liquid contains lithium and other metals such as manganese, zinc and boron. Normally, it is pumped back underground, but the metals can also be filtered out. https://www.youtube.com/embed/oYtyEVPGEU8?wmode=transparent&start=0 How lithium is extracted during geothermal energy production. Courtesy of Controlled Thermal Resources.

“If test projects now underway prove that battery-grade lithium can be extracted from these brines cost effectively, 11 existing geothermal plants along the Salton Sea alone could have the potential to produce enough lithium metal to provide about 10 times the current U.S. demand,” write geologist Michael McKibben of the University of California, Riverside, and energy policy scholar Bryant Jones of Boise State University.

President Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act on March 31, 2022, to provide incentives for U.S. companies to mine and process more critical minerals for batteries.

3. Green hydrogen and other storage ideas

Scientists are working on other ways to boost batteries’ mineral supply chain, too, including recycling lithium and cobalt from old batteries. They’re also developing designs with other materials, explained Kerry Rippy, a researcher with the National Renewable Energy Lab.

Concentrated solar power, for example, stores energy from the sun by heating molten salt and using it to produce steam to drive electric generators, similar to how a coal power plant would generate electricity. It’s expensive, though, and the salts currently used aren’t stable at higher temperature, Rippy writes. The Department of Energy is funding a similar project that is experimenting with heated sand. https://www.youtube.com/embed/fkX-H24Chfw?wmode=transparent&start=0 Hydrogen’s challenges, including its fossil fuel history.

Renewable fuels, such as green hydrogen and ammonia, provide a different type of storage. Since they store energy as liquid, they can be transported and used for shipping or rocket fuel.

Hydrogen gets a lot of attention, but not all hydrogen is green. Most hydrogen used today is actually produced with natural gas – a fossil fuel. Green hydrogen, in contrast, could be produced using renewable energy to power electrolysis, which splits water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, but again, it’s expensive.

“The key challenge is optimizing the process to make it efficient and economical,” Rippy writes. “The potential payoff is enormous: inexhaustible, completely renewable energy.”

4. Using your EV to power your home

Batteries could also soon turn your electric vehicle into a giant, mobile battery capable of powering your home.

Only a few vehicles are currently designed for vehicle-to-home charging, or V2H, but that’s changing, writes energy economist Seth Blumsack of Penn State University. Ford, for example, says its new F-150 Lightning pickup truck will be able to power an average house for three days on a single charge.

How bidirectional charging allows EVs to power homes.

Blumsack explores the technical challenges as V2H grows and its potential to change how people manage energy use and how utilities store power.

For example, he writes, “some homeowners might hope to use their vehicle for what utility planners call ‘peak shaving’ – drawing household power from their EV during the day instead of relying on the grid, thus reducing their electricity purchases during peak demand hours.”

5. Capturing carbon from air and locking it away

Another emerging technology is more controversial.

Humans have put so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the past two centuries that just stopping fossil fuel use won’t be enough to quickly stabilize the climate. Most scenarios, including in recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, show the world will have to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as well.

The technology to capture carbon dioxide from the air exists – it’s called direct air capture – but it’s expensive.

Engineers and geophysicists like David Goldberg of Columbia University are exploring ways to cut those costs by combining direct air capture technology with renewable energy production and carbon storage, like offshore wind turbines built above undersea rock formations where captured carbon could be locked away.

The world’s largest direct air capture plant, launched in 2021 in Iceland, uses geothermal energy to power its equipment. The captured carbon dioxide is mixed with water and pumped into volcanic basalt formations underground. Chemical reactions with the basalt turn it into a hard carbonate.

Goldberg, who helped developed the mineralization process used in Iceland, sees similar potential for future U.S. offshore wind farms. Wind turbines often produce more energy than their customers need at any given time, making excess energy available.

“Built together, these technologies could reduce the energy costs of carbon capture and minimize the need for onshore pipelines, reducing impacts on the environment,” Goldberg writes.

Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.

Stacy Morford, Environment + Climate Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Books

Noam Chomsky books: Where to start?

The renowned American philosopher, historian and social critic, Noam Chomsky, has been a free-thinker almost all his life and has written books challenging the many ways society has programed us to think and believe. Chomsky is among one of the most cited living authors across the globe.

Growing up in a politically active household, he learned from an early age the concepts of politics and anarchism. By age 10 he had written an essay on fascism and by 16 years old he was studying philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. And although he has contributed greatly to the field of linguistics, below are some title, which are among the best and noteworthy books to read on politics, war and media.

The Essential Chomsky

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For fifty years, Noam Chomsky’s writings on politics and language have established him as a preeminent public intellectual and as one of the most original and wide-ranging social critics of our time. Among the seminal figures in linguistic theory over the past century, since the 1960s Chomsky has also secured a place as perhaps the leading dissident voice in the United States.

Chomsky’s many bestselling works–including Manufacturing Consent, Hegemony or Survival, Understanding Power, and Failed States–have served as essential touchstones for dissidents, activists, scholars, and concerned citizens on subjects ranging from the media to human rights to intellectual freedom. His scathing critiques of the U.S. wars in Vietnam, Central America, and the Middle East have been the intellectual inspiration for antiwar movements over nearly five decades. As the political landscape has changed over the course of Chomsky’s life, he has remained a steadfast voice on the left, never wavering in his convictions and always questioning entrenched power.

The Essential Chomsky assembles the core of his most important writings, including excerpts from his most influential texts. Here is an unprecedented, comprehensive overview of Chomsky’s thought.

On Anarchism

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With the specter of anarchy being invoked by the Right to sow fear, a cogent explanation of the political philosophy known as anarchism has never been more urgently needed. In On Anarchism, radical linguist, philosopher, and activist Noam Chomsky provides it. Known for his brilliant evisceration of American foreign policy, state capitalism, and the mainstream media, Chomsky remains a formidable and unapologetic critic of established authority and perhaps the world’s most famous anarchist.

On Anarchism sheds a much-needed light on the foundations of Chomsky’s thought, specifically his constant questioning of the legitimacy of entrenched power. The book gathers his essays and interviews to provide a short, accessible introduction to his distinctively optimistic brand of anarchism. Chomsky eloquently refutes the notion of anarchism as a fixed idea, suggesting that it is part of a living, evolving tradition, and he disputes the traditional fault lines between anarchism and socialism, emphasizing the power of collective, rather than individualist, action.

Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda

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Noam Chomsky’s backpocket classic on wartime propaganda and opinion control begins by asserting two models of democracy–one in which the public actively participates, and one in which the public is manipulated and controlled. According to Chomsky, propaganda is to democracy as the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state, and the mass media is the primary vehicle for delivering propaganda in the United States.

From an examination of how Woodrow Wilson’s Creel Commission succeeded, within six months, in turning a pacifist population into a hysterical, war-mongering population, to Bush Sr.’s war on Iraq, Chomsky examines how the mass media and public relations industries have been used as propaganda to generate public support for going to war. Chomsky further touches on how the modern public relations industry has been influenced by Walter Lippmann’s theory of spectator democracy, in which the public is seen as a bewildered herd that needs to be directed, not empowered; and how the public relations industry in the United States focuses on controlling the public mind, and not on informing it. Media Control is an invaluable primer on the secret workings of disinformation in democratic societies.

Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance

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An immediate national bestseller, Hegemony or Survival demonstrates how, for more than half a century the United States has been pursuing a grand imperial strategy with the aim of staking out the globe. Our leaders have shown themselves willing-as in the Cuban missile crisis-to follow the dream of dominance no matter how high the risks.

World-renowned intellectual Noam Chomsky investigates how we came to this perilous moment and why our rulers are willing to jeopardize the future of our species. With the striking logic that is his trademark, Chomsky tracks the U.S. government’s aggressive pursuit of full spectrum dominance and vividly lays out how the most recent manifestations of the politics of global control-from unilateralism to the dismantling of international agreements to state terrorism-cohere in a drive for hegemony that ultimately threatens our existence. Lucidly written, thoroughly documented, and featuring a new afterword by the author, Hegemony or Survival is a definitive statement from one of today’s most influential thinkers.

Who Rules the World?

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n an incisive, thorough analysis of the current international situation, Noam Chomsky examines the way that the United States, despite the rise of Europe and Asia, still largely sets the terms of global discourse. Drawing on a wide range of examples, from the sordid history of U.S. involvement with Cuba to the sanctions on Iran, he details how America’s rhetoric of freedom and human rights so often diverges from its actions.

He delves deep into the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel-Palestine, providing unexpected and nuanced insights into the workings of imperial power on our increasingly chaotic planet. And, in a new afterword, he addresses the election of Donald Trump and what it shows about American society. Fierce, unsparing, and meticulously documented, Who Rules the World? delivers the indispensable understanding of the central issues of our time that we have come to expect from Chomsky.

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Hot-Lynx

Peter Thiel’s Origin Story

Photo Collage / Lynxotic

Thiel is getting a lot of likely unwanted press this week, looks like he deserves it…

A new feature book profile published in NYMag details the origins of Peter Thiel. His spectacular story, leading to what to some is a toxic, libertarian right-wing, stance that included support of Donald Trump and various other infamous acts, and more recently, such as a huge bankroll pushing his agenda in Washington political lobbying. Not to mention his Roth IRA story of non-taxed treasures worth billions.

The fascinating piece details the biographical details, culled from the book, beginning around 1988 when Thiel was a boy of twenty and first arriving in Northern California.

The article, showing how his eventual political perspectives were already emerging at that young age, it goes on to detail the entire story to nearly the present day as is chronicled in the new book:

The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power

Above: “The Contrarian” – Release date on September 21,2021. Available to order on Bookshop and Amazon.

His ideology dominates Silicon Valley. It began to form when he was an angry young man.

In many ways the book’s release seems to dovetail perfectly with the building thread of details regarding how he rose from obscurity to becoming an obscenely wealthy silicon valley “god”, and one that seems to seek inordinate influence over the direction of our common futures. Not only in the tech arena. Not only in his association with Facebook’s beginnings and origins of PayPal.

This character portrait is a must read. It goes along with why it feels like we also all need to follow the Trump saga to its conclusion, no matter how ignoble or tragic. Or the trial of Elizabeth Holmes, for that matter, to get a sense of how the runaway powers that are sometimes obtained, wether through force of will or just serendipity, and how they can, later, potentially grow so dangerous that the influences can infect and affect us all.

Release date on September 21,2021. Available to order on Bookshop and Amazon.

Read more on:

NY Mag

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