The charity and fundraising foughts of Ian Atkinson


Wednesday 20 July 2011

Bookish




I like to spend my Sundays base jumping, slack lining and extreme ironing.

I mean, I’ve never done any of those, but I’m sure that’s how I’d like to spend my Sundays. I just haven’t had much chance, since for the past year I’ve spent every Sunday writing a book (that’s one book in total, not one book per Sunday).

You ever written a book? They say everyone’s got one in them. Although for many books, ‘in them’ is where they should have stayed.

Not mine though. It’s definitely better out than in. Because it means I can pass on more than 15 years of copywriting experience for less than fifteen quid. I know, less than a pound a year – that is extraordinary value. A form of charity in itself, really.

Five things that occurred to me while toiling over it:

1. Writing a book about writing means your writing has to be pretty well written. Which makes you agonise over every single word. Which is not an easy way to string together 60,000 of them. (And I still managed to get a couple of Greek words wrong.)

2. Copywriting is such a niche subject, it’ll never sell bucket loads of copies. So divide the modest royalties by the enormous number of hours it took to write / edit / proof and the hourly rate would be considerably less than if I’d just spent my weekends strawberry picking.

3. Doing a job where you spend many long days sat at a keyboard writing does not make you keen to spend your weekends sat at a keyboard writing.

4. I am an alarmingly avid admirer of alliteration.

5. The minute the book goes to print you think of five really good things you should have included but didn’t.

Anyway, the book, wittily called Copy. Righter. has a fair few references to fundraising in it and includes several full examples of copy I wrote for charities (who kindly let me reproduce the work) which I then pick apart.

There are chapters about brands, media, concepts and the psychology of persuasion, as well as riveting pieces on what we can learn from Aristotle, a fibbing gorilla and Deal or no Deal.

All in all, it makes for a fascinating read. I should know – between first draft and publication I had to read it about eight times.

Treat yourself to a copy here or have a look at the book’s examples online here. Five star reviews on Amazon are very, very welcome. Thank you.