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Hot Text: Web Writing that Works 1st Edition
Attention, Web writers! This book will show you how to craft prose that grabs your guests' attention, changes their attitudes, and convinces them to act. You'll learn how to make your style fast, tight, and scannable. You'll cook up links that people love to click, menus that mean something, and pages of text that search engines rank high. You'll learn how to write great Web help, FAQs, responses to customers, marketing copy, press releases, news articles, e-mail newsletters, Webzine raves, or your own Web resume. Case studies show real-life examples you can follow. No matter what you write on the Web, you'll see how to personalize, build communities, and burst out of the conventional with your own honest style.
- ISBN-100735711518
- ISBN-13978-0735711518
- Edition1st
- PublisherNew Riders
- Publication dateJanuary 11, 2002
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions7.35 x 1.2 x 9.1 inches
- Print length528 pages
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Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
Inspiring, authoritative, fun, and personalHot Text is an instant classic. -- Rich Coulombre, Principal, The Support Group, Needham, Massachusetts
This is the best web writing book around, with excellent coverage of history, theory, and application. -- Muriel Zimmerman, Coordinator, Programs in Technical Communication, University of California, Santa Barbara
Warm, informative, conversational, inspiring, and honest, this book gave me great ideas and models without feeling like a lecture. -- Colombe Leland, Web writer, newspaper editor, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Why is online writing so bad? Probably because books like this haven't been available until now. Buy it. Read it. -- Seth Godin, Author of Survival is Not Enough, Permission Marketing, and Unleashing the Idea Virus
From the Publisher
From the Back Cover
Attention, Web writers! This book will show you how to craft prose that grabs your guests' attention, changes their attitudes, and convinces them to act. You'll learn how to make your style fast, tight, and scannable. You'll cook up links that people love to click, menus that mean something, and pages of text that search engines rank high. You'll learn how to write great Web help, FAQs, responses to customers, marketing copy, press releases, news articles, e-mail newsletters, Webzine raves, or your own Web resume. Case studies show real-life examples you can follow. No matter what you write on the Web, you'll see how to personalize, build communities, and burst out of the conventional with your own honest style.
About the Author
We are professional Web writers and editors. We regularly coach other writers, showing how to tailor their prose for e-mail, Web pages, and discussions. We focus on text, not design or tags. If you have to write text that will go up on the Web, we're talking to you. We have written for the Internet for the last seven years, so we talk from real experience¿and affection. We love the spirit of the Net.
We come out of a background in journalism (writing for magazines such as Esquire, Harper's, Reader's Digest, and TV Guide), technical communication (writing and consulting with an A-to-Z of high tech firms), art (conceptual art in New York), TV and radio (dozens of interviews, and our own shows).
Along the way, we've written 24 books for major publishers and hundreds of articles for Web sites. Our consulting clients include such firms as America Online, Apple, Broderbund, Cadence, Canon, Cisco, Coupons.com, Disney's Family.com, Epson, eToys, FileMaker, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard and HP.com, Hitachi, IBM, KBKids.com, Ketchum, Kodak, Los Alamos National Labs, Lotus, Matsushita, Middleberg Euro, Mitsubishi, Nikon, Ogilvy, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Relational, Ricoh, Sprint, Sun, Symantec, Visa, Xerox, and Zycad.
Jonathan has taught writing at New Mexico Tech, New York University, Rutgers, University of New Mexico, and the Extension programs of the University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Santa Cruz, and Stanford. Lisa was the Features Editor at KBKids.com from startup days to $80 million merger; she writes a weekly Internet column, ShopTalk, for Coupons.com. She frequently appears on TV and radio.
We live in an adobe house in the woods along the Rio Grande as it flows through New Mexico. Our sons, Ben and Noah, take the Web for granted, but prefer football.
Product details
- Publisher : New Riders; 1st edition (January 11, 2002)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 528 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0735711518
- ISBN-13 : 978-0735711518
- Item Weight : 1.85 pounds
- Dimensions : 7.35 x 1.2 x 9.1 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,776,455 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,358 in Web Design (Books)
- #8,688 in Internet & Telecommunications
- #17,852 in Internet & Social Media
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

As a journalist, I've enjoyed getting to know people in the worlds of art, computers, video, and the web.
As a conceptual artist and concrete poet, I absorbed a lot from brave audiences. My artwork has appeared in the Jewish Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Farmington, NM Museum, the Albuquerque Museum, and the David Rumsey Map Collection at Stanford University, as well as dozens of galleries in the U.S. and Canada.
As a teacher, I've learned enormously from my students at NYU, Rutgers, the Shakespeare Institute, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, UNM, and professional organizations such as the ACM, IEEE, and STC.
And as a writer, I've always gotten a kick out of working collaboratively with other writers.
I live in New Mexico, overlooking the Rio Grande, with two Corgis who chase away balloons during the annual fiesta.
My wife Lisa is a writer, too. We co-authored Hot Text: Web Writing that Works.
My son Ben runs an insurance office here in town, and Noah runs a start-up offering fresh prep food.
Me, I'm busy doing art pieces, fiction, and a bunch of writing about art on the web.
You can learn more about all of us in the books...and our blog:
http://museumzero.blogspot.com/
For even more, please take a look at our web sites:
www.webwritingthatworks.com
museumzero.art
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The book is at its best in the section aptly titled "Write Like a Human Being." Here, you'll find dozens of practical tips and techniques for Web copywriting. From "Shorten That Text" to "Write Menus That Mean Something," the Prices not only tell you how it's done, but demonstrate it in "before and after" samples. And each tip is evaluated in an "Audience Fit" grid that assesses how well it suits various types of site visitors. These five chapters alone (covering nearly 200 pages) are worth the price of the book.
Hot Text is much more than a style guide. Another 150 pages discuss how to write for the various genres found on the Web--help text, FAQs, marketing copy, PR and news releases, 'zines, e-mail newsletters and (yes) Weblogs.
Throughout, the book is extensively supported by a wealth of useful references (many of them available online) and pertinent callout quotations. And just when you think there couldn't be any more good stuff, you'll find helpful information on how to find a job as a Web copywriter.
I have two major quibbles with Hot Text. For a book that emphasizes clarity of expression, it begins on an odd foot. After a brief introduction to some general principles of Web-writing, it jumps into a discussion of object-oriented writing that is bewildering to novices. The normally crisp text slows to a snail's pace as they wax a little too theoretical. Don't get me wrong--this is important stuff, but it is the least successful part of the book.
Second, as an information architect and Web writer, I'm intimately aware of the strong connection between information architecture, user interface, menus and text. Attempting to draw clear boundaries between them is well-nigh impossible.
Unfortunately, the Prices cross those lines too often by assigning IA tasks--for example, menu structuring and user personas--to the copy writer. While I'm certain that many Web writers are indeed saddled with such chores due to budget limitations, IA activities are best left to those with the appropriate training and experience. Yet "information architecture" isn't even included in the index! The Prices' readers would be better served by a chapter or two on the makeup of Web project teams and the central role of collaboration in site development.
Keep these in mind and Hot Text will find itself a well-thumbed addition to your bookshelf.
I do think, however, that the book is written in a style that is rather confusing and unappealing. I think this comes from the authors trying to be all things to all people.
But this book hits on topics that the lesser books such as Net Words fail to cover. In their zest to get to market and gain new clients, those authors write lots of puff and little meat.
Hot Text offers the meat. So if you only buy one book on online copywriting and usability, make it this one. It doesn't cover everything but it gives you the basic background and the knowledge to do a good job on creating a useful Web site.
This book is suited for beginners or more experienced people who write for the web or would like to. But it is better suited for those with very little experience or who want a reminder of what works and what doesn't.
Those with a lot of experience will quickly do a read-through and pick up a few good ideas and be done with it. But even that is worth the cost of the book.
I highly recommend this book to those people who need the information the most.
Susanna K. Hutcheson
Owner and Executive Copy Director
Powerwriting.com LLC
If you haven't read Krug's book, "Hot Text" will be a good starting point for you. It contains a lot of information, it also contains some good resources.
I also have to say that I agree with an earlier reviewer--the photographs (which look like poor black & white photocopies) are strange. Example: Chapter 8, Idea 4: Build Chunky Paragraphs! The photograph shows a middle-aged man holding a small bowl or cup up to his mouth. He's looking off-camera; his right hand is by his mouth but I'm not sure why. Maybe he's eating some chunky soup? But what does soup have to do with paragraphs? It's a small detail, these photographs, but they detract from the overall professionalism of the book for me.
1. Detailed instruction for every conceivable page of Web site content.
2. Super tips and insight on PR content and dealing with editors and publishers.
3. The history of HTML (very cool!)
4. All sorts of useful style tips.
5. How to write your resume.
6. How to get a job.
7. Hundreds of online resources.
The writing (needless to say?)is clear, concise, and conversational. Had the book been written in 2006 instead of 2002, I'm sure the authors would have thrown in much more about blogs. Other than that, the material seems to be up to date.
This book is worth every penny!
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Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on September 14, 2018



