If screaming headlines and over-the-top phrasing make you want to hide your head in a bushel, get this guide to writing attention-getting yet honest and helpful sales copy.

Whether you're a coach, author, financial advisor, B-to-B product manager or simply a professional who values trust, dignity and respect for clients, you'll find a framework for setting down a solid first draft and tweaking it into an effective selling tool. This concise handbook from a copywriting expert known for creative marketing leads beginning and intermediate writers through a three-step process of collecting the needed information, jazzing it up responsibly and then polishing it so it appeals to ideal customers.

Discover:

• The five inescapable components of a complete marketing presentation and another element that adds oomph whenever it's appropriate.
• Why it's essential to provide more information for shoppers, rather than less - and how to identify the facts customers need.
• 10 ways to make yourself and what you're selling more credible.
• 21 no-hype writing techniques that make dull items much more desirable.
• Dozens of illuminating examples (many structured as "before" and "after").
• 11 kinds of unethical or disreputable marketing tactics to avoid so you maintain self-respect and buyers' trust.
• 12 methods of fine-tuning your headline for greater reader intrigue and curiosity.
• How and why to tinker with your tone.
• 8 techniques for making whatever you wrote more direct, clear and powerful.

This is a resource you'll want to consult again and again to transform a boring, weak promotion into one that sings you honorably into the profit column.

Marcia Yudkin is the author of Meatier Marketing Copy, Persuading on Paper, 6 Steps to Free Publicity, and 13 other traditionally published books, including a Book of the Month Club selection and another featured on "Oprah." She has delivered commentaries on National Public Radio and landed publicity on page 1 of the Wall Street Journal.