Chapbook: A thin booklet or book of literary fiction or poetry.

Chapter book: Used to move young readers up from picture books. It is usually short and simple in it's stories.

Clips: Samples of an author's published work. They can be photocopies of articles in print magazines or printed copies of online work.

Concept: One or two sentences that summarizes a screenplay.

Contributor' copies: Copies of a periodical or magazine that contains the author's work. They can be for partial or full payment for the work.

Copy editing: Editing a manuscript for sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, etc. Not editing for content.

Copyright: Legal protection of an author's work. The U.S. Copyright law has been changed in recent years. Now the copyright is automatically secured when the piece is written. Copyright registration is not required any longer.

Conventional publisher: Contracts with an author to sell their book. The publisher then edits, designs, prints and markets the book all at their own expense. The author is paid royalties, a percentage of book sales. The new changes in the publishing industry today dictate that all authors must be able to market their own books at their own time and expense. Publishers can no longer afford to do this for the large number of authors they publish these days. Many publishers today will not publish an author who has not established an author's platform and started developing a community. In most cases publishers today are requiring authors to do these two things at least 1 year before they will consider publishing them.

Co-publishing: See Subsidy publishing

Cover letter: A short letter that introduces a manuscript or book proposal to a publisher.

Derivative work: A work that alters the original work. Usually results in a screenplay, condensed version or a translation.

Electronic submission: Many publishers require electronic submissions today. This is when you submit your work on a disk or upload it to their website as per their request. Many publishers today require both a hard copy and an electronic submission for publication.

El-Hi: A short way to indicate the elementary school to high school market.

Fair use: You can quote a small portion of a copyrighted work without written permission. You must be careful though, fair use is not very easy to determine and is up to the publisher or author to decide in the long run. It is always best to check with the copyright holder before using quotes or small sentences or paragraphs in your work.

Feature: An article written in a colorful and lively manner. It focuses on human interest and is longer than a newspapers story.

Filler: A short piece of writing that magazine and newspaper publishers use to fill up space.

First North American Rights: The right to be the first publisher of your work in a periodical within North America, which includes the United States and Canada. This is the most common type of First Rights.

First Rights: The right to be the first publisher of your work in a periodical. Sometimes, this comes with specific geographic limitations.

Formula: Describes the use of predictable plots and characters in a fiction story for a novel, short story or movie.

Frontlist: Books that are published in the current season.

Front Matter: The material at the front of a book. It can include, but is not limited to: title page, dedication, copyright page, table of contents, list of illustrations, epigraph, list of tables, forward, preface, acknowledgments, introduction.


You can find all of the Writing Glossary Articles here:

Writing Glossary at a Glance A to B

Writing Glossary at a Glance C to F

Writing Glossary at a Glance G to L

Writing Glossary at a Glance M to P

Writing Glossary at a Glance Q to Z



On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction





Bluedolphin Crow is the writer for BellaOnline's Nonfiction Writing Site. Why not circle her on Google+?




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