These ads–from the February issue of Writer’s Digest magazine–bother me.

First burr in my backside? The line, “Where all authors are published.” Really? Wouldn’t it be more honest to say “We’ll take $$$ from absolutely anyone.”?

The line is tantalizing to beginning authors. They read it with emotion, not logic and don’t consider that not everyone is ready to have their writing on bookstore shelves.

It’s like saying, “Everyone who tries out for American Idol will make the top 12!”

Next are the numerous grammatical mistakes like: “Are you a writer? Then Get Published!” (To be fair, maybe they couldn’t decide whether to use capital letters or lower case, so they used a combo of both.)

How ’bout “Publish your work in our list of Genres.”

In addition to capitalizing “genres” the sentence is incorrect.

Where’s the hyphen in “non-fiction.”?

The ad became a game. How many mistakes could I find? (And I didn’t even touch on the basic design flaws.)

I understand mistakes. I make ‘em.  But more than five? In a national magazine? When you’re trying to promote yourself as an expert at publishing books? Huh uh. Unforgivable.

If I did ads like that for my clients they would, and should, fire me.

When you post to your blog, change your Web site or design an ad, quadruple checking will always save your face from getting a nice shade of crimson.

Want to play? Tell us what isn’t working in the second ad.

Tags: ad design, copy writing, Marketing, publishing on demand