Brochure copy

What brochure copy is

Brochure copy is the writing for a multi-page printed piece: eight, twelve or sixteen pages about a business, a range or a place, meant to be picked up, kept and looked at more than once. It is read sitting down, at reading distance, page by page. A reader gives it two or three minutes on the first pass and may come back to it a fortnight later, when they are ready to act.

It is also permanent. A web page is corrected in a minute; two thousand printed copies in a box are corrected by throwing them away. That single fact decides most of what can go in one.

It is not a sales sheet, which is one priced page about one product, replaced whenever the price moves, and it is not a flyer, which is one message read standing up. A brochure earns its cost by staying right for a year or more.

When you need one

You need one when something physical is handed over as part of how you sell: a residence or a school visited by a family, a showroom, a trade stand, a tender pack, a waiting room. You need one when the brochure you have is three years old and wrong in ways that cost you a sale: a member of staff who left, a price that has moved twice, a service you stopped offering.

You do not need one if a single page would do the job. One product with a price is a sales sheet, and one message handed out at an event is a flyer. Both are considerably cheaper, and I will say which you are actually asking for on the first call.

What goes in it, and why it is not the website

The usual failure is that the website gets pasted into the brochure. It is recognisable at a glance: paragraphs ending in a call to action nobody can click, headings written to be scanned rather than read, and three spreads that each open with the same summary sentence, because on the web each of those pages was somebody's first arrival.

Website copy is built for a reader who lands anywhere, skims, and clicks for the detail. Print has no landing anywhere, no menu and no clicking. The reader starts at the front, moves in order, and either stays or closes it, so the writing has to carry them from spread to spread, repeat nothing, and answer the question each spread raises before the page turns.

A twelve-page piece is roughly five spreads of copy once the cover and the back are out. Each gets one job.

• The cover and the opening spread. What this business is and who it is for, in the first fifty words. Not a welcome message and not the founder's history.
• The middle spreads. One subject each: a range, a service, a process, a place, written so a reader opening it at random knows where they are.
• The proof spread. Named customers or projects with specifics, or the credentials, certifications and years that a printed piece can carry credibly.
• The practical page. What happens next and how to reach you. In print this works without a link, so it is a phone number, an address and a web address short enough to type.
• Everything that must not date. Prices, staff names, the current year, seasonal offers, anything described as new. These are the lines that make a print run worthless in eight months, and they come out or get rewritten to survive.

Where a price genuinely has to appear, it goes on a loose insert that can be reprinted on its own. That one decision usually saves more than the copy costs.

What you get

The copy, mapped to spreads. Every heading, paragraph, caption and pull quote, in the order the reader meets them, with a word count against each block so the designer knows what will fit.

Caption and image notes. What each photograph must show for the copy beside it to make sense, because in print the picture and the paragraph are read together.

A dating check. A list of every line with a shelf life and what I did about each: removed, made general, or moved to the insert. You sign it off, and it is what you read again before the next reprint.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A retirement residence in Fredericton has a sixteen-page brochure handed to adult children visiting on behalf of a parent. It was assembled from the website three years ago. It names a chef who left in the first year, quotes monthly fees that have changed twice, and opens four spreads with variations of the same sentence about compassionate care.

The rewrite drops it to twelve pages. The opening spread says who the residence is for and what level of care it provides. Four middle spreads take one subject each: the suites, the meals, the medical support, and a day in the building described hour by hour. Fees move to a loose insert updated each January, and no individual is named except the owner. The decision that came out of it was to print smaller runs more often, since the piece is handed over one at a time rather than mailed in thousands.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. Who receives the brochure and where, how long the print run has to last, and how many pages the designer is planning. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. The page count, the spreads of copy, the revision rounds and the delivery date, agreed before anything starts.
3. A visit or a long call. An hour or two with the people who do the work, plus any existing material. Print rewards specifics, and specifics come from talking rather than from your site.
4. The draft, spread by spread. Seven to ten working days after that conversation. You read it as pages, not as a manuscript.
5. Final copy, the dating check and handover. One round of revisions included, then the copy goes to your designer with the image notes, and to a proofreader before the printer sees it.

Two to four weeks from first call to print-ready copy is typical for a twelve-page piece.

What it costs

Brochure copy is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call, based on the page count and how much of the material has to be gathered by interview. Design, photography and printing are not included, though I can brief and manage the first two through design coordination. The pricing page explains how quoting works for services without a published band.

What happens next

Three things usually follow. The brochure's description of the business becomes the version used everywhere else, which is a company profile. The individual products get their own priced sheets, since a brochure deliberately avoids prices. Or the same discipline is applied to the other printed things a customer holds, which is the words on the box and the card inside it. The brochure is complete on its own, and nothing further is assumed.