Here are the sources and reference sites listed (in chapter order) in the copywriting books by Jason Deign.

Please note that external links on this page and elsewhere on this website are for information only.

Also, please bear in mind that many of these links are relevant to the UK only.

For recommended reference books and other useful purchases, see the books page and benefit from discounts through Amazon.co.uk.

Why Become a Copywriter?

For background information, training and more you might want to contact the Institute of Copywriting: www.inst.org/copy/.

Getting Started

In the UK, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs offers tax and employment advice and has local offices all around the country – the nearest one to you will be listed in the phone book. The department’s website is at www.hmrc.gov.uk.

Companies House: www.companieshouse.co.uk.

For information on VAT, contact your local Revenue and Customs or VAT Business Advice Centre, which will be listed in the phone book under ‘Revenue and Customs’; see also on the web: www.hmrc.gov.uk.

Other sources of advice are banks (if you open a business account, you will be offered the services of a business adviser), Business Link www.businesslink.gov.uk (a national network of advice centres for small businesses) and the Federation of Small Businesses at www.fsb.org.uk.

See also www.britishchambers.org.uk for your local Chamber of Commerce; the Department of Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, www.berr.gov.uk; www.bgateway.com for businesses in Scotland; www.smallbusiness.co.uk; www.smallbusinessadvice.org.uk; www.j4b.co.uk for information on grants for business and industry; and www.startups.co.uk for start-up grants. Most of these sources of information are free of charge, but some may require a subscription fee, so do check first. Lastly, do not forget to look up trade associations and fellow business owners for advice.

Getting Kitted Out

For computers and peripherals see the websites of the major manufacturers – www.apple.com, www.hp.com, www.dell.com, www.sony.com and so on – or shops like www.buy.com or www.argos.co.uk or search a shopping comparison engine like www.kelkoo.com.

Microsoft: www.microsoft.com.

Other useful websites for handling online material are: www.winzip.com (for unpacking compressed files downloaded from the internet), www.macromedia.com (for downloading Flash, which is used to provide animation on many websites), www.adobe.com (which produces Acrobat, a program which is used to view documents over the net), www.realplayer.com (which is required to view video clips or listen to audio files from sources such as the BBC) and www.quicktime.com (another program which can be used to view video or listen to sound clips).

Web mail providers include www.hotmail.com, www.yahoo.com, www.lycos.com and others. If you have a website, check to see if your web hosting company offers web mail.

Antivirus software can be obtained from www.mcafee.com, www.nai.com or www.sophos.com.

The Zone Alarm firewall can be downloaded from www.zonelabs.com.

Where to Work

For Serviced Offices, look in your local Yellow Pages under ‘Office rental’ or go through a large national company such as Regus (www.regus.com).

Book Keeping for Copywriters

The Motley Fool (www.fool.co.uk) has information on Pensions and other financial products.

If you are worried about managing cash flow, the Better Payment Practice Group has lots of information about your statutory rights and advice on how to make sure you are paid on time. It has two publications – Better Payment Practice Late Payment Guide and A User’s Guide to the Late Payment Act - which can be downloaded from www.payontime.co.uk.

How to Find Work – and Keep it

Online work exchanges include Creativemoonlighter (www.creativemoonlighter.com), E-lance (www.elance.com) and Smarterwork (www.smarterwork.com); these are all US sites which, nevertheless, may offer UK and European work.

For building websites, tips on HTML and other web programming languages can be found at www.w3.org.

Web authoring software packages include FrontPage from Microsoft (www.microsoft.com/en/gb/), FusionMX from NetObjects (www.netobjects.com), GoLive from Adobe (www.adobe.com) and WebEditor from Namo (www.namo.com).

Other online resources for website design include Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox (www.useit.com/alertbox/) and the Yale Style Manual (http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/); if you are uploading your own web pages you will also need a file transfer protocol (FTP) program from a company such as Ipswitch (www.ipswitch.com – no relation to the UK town of the same name).

Freelance agencies online include Home Run Connection (www.homerunconnection.com) and Headbank (www.headbank.com) in the US and Xchangeteam (www.xchangeteam.com) in the UK .

London-based recruitment agencies that place freelance copywriters include Stopgap (www.stopgap.co.uk) and Major Players (www.majorplayers.co.uk).

Look out for ads on www.brandrepublic.com and www.mad.co.uk.

Pricing – for guides, speak to agencies or see the National Union of Journalists website, http://media.gn.apc.org/feesguide/.

Getting Help

Professional bodies include the Advertising Association (www.adassoc.org.uk), the Direct Marketing Association (www.dma.org.uk), the Public Relations Consultants Association(www.martex.co.uk/prca/) and the Institute of Public Relations ( www.ipr.org.uk). For a fuller list of industry bodies, try the Zenith Media website, www.zenithmedia.com.

The Periodical Publishers Association website can be found at www.ppa.co.uk.

Search engines worth book-marking on your browser include www.ask.co.uk, www.google.com, uk.yahoo.com and www.ukplus.co.uk.

Other useful sites include: Babelfish (translations), http://news.bbc.co.uk/ (news) and www.ananova.com (news).

Delivering Great Copy

The basic rules of great copywriting – particularly as they apply to web copy and especially on topics such as selling benefits, not features, and using the active rather than passive voice – are covered in detail in the Grokdotcom newsletter produced by Future Now, a US internet marketing advisory publisher. To sign up, visit www.grokdotcom.com.

Things to Watch Out For

For the meanings of technical abbreviations, visit www.whatis.com.

For online dictionaries and translations, visit www.dictionary.com.

Writing for Advertising

The main UK advertising magazine is Campaign. To subscribe, visit www.brandrepublic.com.

For links to a wide range of advertising-related sites, visit the Zenith Media website at www.zenithmedia.com.

Scriptwriting sites include Simply Scripts (www.simplyscripts.com) or Screentalk (www.screentalk.org). Scriptware script formatting software is available at www.scriptware.com.

Writing for Direct Marketing

Direct Marketing Association: www.dma.org.uk.

The Royal Mail website is at www.royalmail.com.

Writing for the Internet

Future Now’s Grokdotcom newsletter is a must for web copywriters; www.grokdotcom.com.

Writing for the Press

In the first instance, for general information, see the National Union of Journalists website at http://media.gn.apc.org/flindex.html.

The UK Press Gazette website is at www.pressgazette.co.uk.

Writing for Sales and Sales Promotion

The Institute of Sales Promotion website is at www.isp.org.uk).

jd jun 2008