By Frank Baron, Victoria Strauss & James D. Macdonald

Writer: One who turns thoughts into words and transcribes same onto paper and/or a computer screen.

Published Writer: One whose words have been purchased in order to be displayed or portrayed in a media format.

Working Writer: One who lives solely, or mostly, on money earned from writing. The working writer need not be published in the traditional sense. He or she may be a salaried employee or freelancer who writes advertising copy, newsletters, technical manuals, etc.

Freelance Writer: A hardy soul who writes articles and stories and sends them out to various media outlets in the hope of getting paid and published. Must not be deterred by rejection.

SAE/SASE: Self-addressed envelope/self-addressed stamped envelope.

Hack: A writer who is not as good as you are.

Damned Hack: A writer who is not as good as you are but makes more money.

Copy Editor: A person whose job entails making you wish you hadn't dozed off in Grammar class.

Content Editor: A person whose job is to tell you your words are shining pearls of wit and wisdom but they could still use a bit of buffing. Requires tact and the ability to remain stoic in the face of petulant tantrums.

Editor: An umbrella term encompassing a broad range of duties, some of which are: evaluating written works to determine whether or not they are publishable; suggesting/making changes to those deemed to have merit; rejecting those which are not suitable; ensuring accepted pieces are properly formatted, have the correct word count and are ready before deadline, and the ability to cram 12 hours of work into an eight-hour shift. Must not be allergic to Tums.

Damned Editor: One who rejects your shining pearls of wit and wisdom.

Publisher: The one who controls the purse strings of the media outlet which purchases, promotes, and distributes your words. To my knowledge, no writer has actually ever seen a publisher, hence they have achieved near-mythological status. Editors have though, and justifiably fear them.

Big Publisher: One who is by a large order of magnitude, scarier and more mythological than the Publisher.

Agent: A person whose job is to place your shining pearls of wit and wisdom in front of Big Publishers and Publishers in the hope they will be purchased. They know the secret knock. At least the good ones do. Must be equally adept at schmoozing with Editors and calming hysterical Writers. A legitimate agent works for a percentage of a writer's income and does not collect any other fees, though s/he may expect the writer to defray some of the expense of submission.

Author: A writer who has had his or her shining pearls of wit and wisdom printed in book form.

Traditionally Published Author: A new-ish term, necessitated by the advancement of desktop and digital publishing, which has resulted in the huge growth of vanity, self and subsidized publishing. A traditionally-published author is one who has been paid for the right to print his or her shining pearls of wit and wisdom in book form. The TPA’s only out-of-pocket expenses from the inception of the idea to admiring his book on bookstore shelves, are printing out and mailing the manuscript to the publisher.

POD - Print on Demand (the technology): A digital technology that allows books to be printed and bound one at a time, thus providing an inexpensive way to produce books rarely demanded.

POD - Print on Demand (the business model): An enterprise that uses digital technology to publish rarely-demanded books. Because rarely-demanded books sell only rarely, these enterprises must make their profit from writers rather than from readers, and usually either charge a fee or expect writers to buy large quantities of their own books. To further protect profit, they impose high cover prices, don’t accept returns, and provide no or minimal support services such as editing and marketing. (Also see Vanity Publisher.)

Self-Publishing: In which writers attempt to de-mythologize the process of publication by undertaking it themselves. An expensive, exacting, time-consuming process that works best for niche nonfiction, and is more likely to leave the writer with a garage full of books than a portfolio full of press clippings.

Vanity Publisher: One that offers publication for a fee. Since publication is based not on the worth of the writer’s words but on the girth of the writer’s wallet, vanity-published authors aren’t respected. This is known as the “vanity stigma."

Subsidy Publisher: One that offers publication for a fee, but also purports to share costs with the author. In fact, most “subsidy” publishers are just vanity publishers with a deceptive line of patter, and not only don’t invest a cent but build a fat profit into their fees. A true subsidy publisher is rarer than the dodo. Alternate terms: joint venture publisher, co-publisher, partner publisher.

WIP: Work In Progress.

Cat Waxing: Behavior the author undertakes to avoid working on the WIP. E.g. "I've mowed the lawn, washed the windows, weeded the garden, scrubbed the toilets, and worked out all my menus for the next three months. Guess it's time to ... wait! How long has it been since I've waxed the cat?"

Internet: The best source of high-quality Cat Wax.

Glamour: What replaces health insurance, a pension, weekends, holidays, and untroubled sleep in a freelance writer's life.

Booksigning: What to schedule if you're trying to put off oral surgery.

Royalty checks: The bi-annual insult. (Also sometimes referred to as Reality Check.)

Book reviews: What the Devil writes when he gets tired of delaying royalty checks.

Typos: Misspelled words added to your manuscript by gremlins between the time you mail your manuscript and when the editor receives it.

Professional writer: Someone who tells lies to strangers for money.

Fiction writer: Someone who tells his own lies.

Non-Fiction writer: Someone who tells other people's lies.

Contract: The fine print of how your soul is sold.

Money: An elusive but entertaining form of coloured paper, which the writer should learn to do without.

Voice: The quality that makes a writer unique, just like other writers.

Literary fiction: Work of great sensibility and refinement, where it can take up to 500 pages for nothing to happen.

 

Victoria Strauss is the author of six fantasy novels, including The Arm of the Stone, The Garden of the Stone and her most recent, The Burning Land, just out from HarperCollins Eos. She’s a regular book reviewer for the online journal SF Site, and her articles on writing have appeared in Writer’s Digest and elsewhere. She’s an active member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, where she serves as vice-Chair of the Writing Scams Committee and maintains the Writer Beware literary scams warning website (www.writerbeware.com). She welcomes visitors to her own website: www.victoriastrauss.com.

Jim Macdonald has been writing full-time for darn near twenty years. He still hasn't learned his lesson.

Thanks also to Raymond K. Wong and Robert Highland.