The Copywriter Underground

I’ve thrown myself down a Podcasting crash course, so in between bumpy landings and dead ends, I don’t have time for much else, like copywriting or blogging. How did I end up in this mess?

What do you do when you’re doing more copywriting work for a client — but effectively getting paid less? The Copywriter Underground talks about “Project Creep” — and how to avoid the revenue drains that follow.

The Oxford University Press has already chosen “locavore” as its 2007 “Word of the Year” — despite the fact 2007 isn’t over yet.

Done any free work lately? Seen your work used in multiple places — without ever receiving a dime?
The never-demur Harlan Ellison — a successful, outspoken and abrasive writer — tells it like it is in this short interview. Great stuff — I would have laughed a lot more if so much of it hadn’t been [...]

AT&T is now offering realtime monitoring services to small and medium sized businesses. Big Brother’s watching, and it turns out he’s your boss…

It’s Friday, which means copywriters all over the planet are struggling to meet deadlines, but since it’s the end of a long, long week, we’re mostly brain dead. Frankly, our copy reflects it.
How do we stop ourselves from shipping something… well… stupid?
Why, I use the Internet StupidFilter:
The concept behind the StupidFilter Project originated during a [...]

Writing billboards is tough. You’re delivering a sales message at freeway speeds, and you absolutely, positively must cut through the barrage of information coming at your reader — who’s trying to keep a ton of steel nicely centered between the lines.
Billboards: An Example of KISS
New copywriters are barraged with formulas for writing great copy, [...]

Someone once said screenwriters were “only the first drafts of human beings.” That’s funny, but it underscores the problems faced by Hollywood screenwriters, who aren’t getting their fair share of the emerging digital market.
Still, why should you — a copywriter — even care about the Hollywood writer’s strike?
Simple.
Hollywood’s writers face many of the same issues [...]