On not being a 'real' copywriter

It's hard to dismiss 'impostors' when you still feel like one yourself.

Recently, I’ve seen a few posts over on LinkedIn bemoaning the influx of ‘people calling themselves copywriters’.

I don’t know how I feel about it. Because that used to be me. And while it’s a few years away in time, psychologically, it still feels close.

I came to freelancing from non-fiction publishing. Having trained as an editor, I thought I’d better present myself as one.

Conversely, having not trained or worked as a copywriter, I thought it was presumptuous, deceitful or even risky to label myself that way.

So I started out trading under my own name, with a puny, self-effacing website and the (crap) tagline ‘Flexible editorial ability’.

However, I soon realised that when prospects went looking for my skills, they searched for ‘copywriter’.

Perhaps they didn’t know what a ‘real’ copywriter was. But they clearly had even less idea what an editor was. And as Confucius says, you turn the handle the way it goes, not the way it ought to go.

Besides, where were the barriers to me being a copywriter? In the market, or my mind? Surely the proof of the pudding was in the copy approval and invoice payment.

So I rebranded under ABC Copywriting, with the (marginally better) tagline ‘We’ll choose your words carefully’. The work flowed in, and when I ended up writing for brands that people had actually heard of, I felt I was finally a ‘real’ copywriter. However, the feelings of insecurity never went away – and it’s hard to dismiss ‘impostors’ when you still feel like one yourself.

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

Copywriting is a broad church. There are many clients to serve, with many expectations to be met. And there are many copywriters, with many specialities, backgrounds, personalities and types of knowledge. Who am I to say they can’t all find a place?

What’s more, we can describe ourselves however we want. We can specialise by subject, client, channel or type of copy. We can say we’re ‘senior’, ‘experienced’ or even ‘real’. Third-party qualifications and certifications may help to guide clients the ‘right’ way, for them and/or us. But in the end, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet – and it’s the market doing the sniffing.

If you believe everything you read, copywriting has been perpetually ‘dying’ since I started doing it two decades ago. Without being complacent, time brings perspective. I’m old enough to remember when CD-ROMs, let alone Kindles, were going to kill paper books. AOL keyword: they didn’t.

The truth is that everything changes. All we can do is serve clients as best we can. If we give value, we’ll get value – and be valued, too. If others don’t provide value, maybe they’ll have to go elsewhere. But that’s outside our control.

We all ride the waves, and we can’t command them to stop just because they’ve brought us to a comfortable beach. I’m grateful to have got this far, and I hope there’s more to come. But I can’t begrudge others who want their turn.