By Andrew Boulton and Giles Edwards
232 pages, softcover, £8.99
Published by Gasp Books
gasp.agency

Author and copywriter Andrew Boulton takes an interesting approach to showcasing the profession of copywriting. Instead of a how-to-write-the-perfect-headline guide, he offers a wild ride through his whimsical mind. Through an array of musings, stories and insights that have stemmed from his more-than-ten-year career, he details a wide spectrum of the life that results from choosing a career in the creative world of advertising.

With no page numbers and even an unconventional page display of short columns with bite-sized paragraphs, Copywriting Is… is a book you can flip open to any page and find useful tips, observations and laughs. Boulton structures his book by completing the sentence “Copywriting is…” 35 times—for example, copywriting is originality, copywriting is patience and, perhaps my favorite, copywriting is pain—to detail all the unique aspects of the job. He dishes out tons of valuable gems like: “The key to effective copywriting is to remember that writing and editing are  separate processes.” He also mixes in plenty of LOL quips: “You know you’re finished as a writer when you begin a chapter with a dictionary definition.”

My only question: After receiving such a thorough background of the job—warts and all—would a reader be enticed into the field of copywriting or driven away? I’ve already chosen copywriter as my profession, so my decision was made years ago. For most of us who have fully committed, we have one key thing in common: copywriting is our passion. —Dave Kuhl