Words That Sell: Thesaurus to Help Promote Your Products, Services and Ideas [Paperback]

Bayan describes Grabbers (heads, salutations, invitations, openings, transitions), Descriptions and Benefits, Clinchers (persuasion and decision), Terms & Offers (discounts, freebies, trials, guarantees), and Special Strategies (company image, justifying a high price, knocking the competition, using demographics, flattering the reader, and appealing for contributions). Each section has pages of suggested phrasing. The appendix contains puffspeak-and its alternatives, wordy expressions, commonly confused words and more. This is not a book you read; it is a quick reference.

Richard Bayan is a full-time copywriter who shares his collection of WORDS THAT SELL in these pages.

As the author of 113 books (including revisions and foreign-language editions) and over 500 magazine articles, I highly recommend this volume to book publishers. DanPoynter@ParaPublishing.com.

That's how this book is meant to be used. If you are writing copy for any type of advertising or promotional purposes, you will find this 'Thesaurus' style book very handy. This isn't strictly a thesaurus since the words in each section aren't necessarily synonyms but more like related words. If you are new to the world of copy writing, 'copy' generally refers to any type of writing associated with sales material. For example, when you read an advertisement for a soft drink, the art of writing the ad is called 'copy writing'.

You can find other uses for the content in this book as I did above with the title for this review. But in general, most people use this book to come up with writing that is compelling enough for the reader to perform the intended action whatever that action happens to be.

The book is split into 6 sections - Grabbers, Descriptions and Benefits, Clinchers, Terms & Offers, Special Strategies, and an Appendix containing miscellaneous sections. There is a 2 page copywriting primer included that has 8 tips to learn before you start writing copy. The Appendix has several miscellaneous topics like 'Categories of Copy', 'Puffspeak - And Its Alternative', 'Wordy Expressions', 'Commonly Misspelled Words', 'Commonly Confused Words', 'Selling Yourself', 'Sample Order Forms', and 'Further Reading'.

The book is filled with pages and pages of words and in some cases expressions that are categorized into different headings under each chapter. The largest chapter is Part 2: Descriptions and Benefits, taking up more than half the book. You can go through the table of contents and find the section with the relevant words. You could also go through the index and find a word that seems to fit approximately and then go to that page to read through the related words and expressions till you find the perfect fit.

Recently, a follow on book by the same author 'More Words That Sell' has been released. The fundamental difference between the two books is that this book is intended to be used for general purpose copy writing like your basic services and the new book is intended to be used for more specific and detailed copy writing. That's the best way I can describe the differences and this is also corroborated by the author at the beginning of the second book.

Overall, I believe this is a valuable resource to have if you are even remotely involved in coming up with 'sales copy' for your company. The low price of the book is well worth the value you get by using this book. Before buying this and other books on copy writing, I used to do a decent job in coming up with the sales copy for my company's services. After reading this book and others like it, I have decided to completely revise the sales copy of my services! I do believe that good copy writing takes practice and these kinds of books are helpful guides in that process. I wish you the best of luck!