Writing Tips & Media Lingo By Miki Forester At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

You’ve gotten your first contract to write your first professional article. You aren’t sure how to submit the piece, whether you should call the editor, what to do when she has a question.

Common Publishing Lingo
If you have never been published before you may be asked to write the article “on spec”—this means “on speculation.” It’s common for editors to ask authors that they haven’t worked with before to write something on spec. You will write the entire article for free. If it is accepted the magazine will pay you. If not, you are free to submit it someplace else.

If you do get an assignment some magazines offer a “kill fee”—usually 10% or 15% of the initial fee. For example, let’s you are assigned an article for $100. You turn it in and the editor decides not to use it. You will be paid $10 for the kill fee. That’s 10% of $100.

If an editor asks you to work on your “nut graf” she doesn’t want you to write about your love of almonds. She is asking you about the paragraph that has the facts or the essential information about the article; in other words, the nut or kernel of the article.

Your editor keeps talking about a “book” yet you thought you were writing for a magazine. What’s going on? Magazines are often called books. The front-of-book is the table of contents, the letter from the editor, or any other common material that comes in front of the main section. The back-of-book is material that comes at the end, including classifieds, special deals, or a column or essay that appears on the last page. Usually, any “jumps” or continuations from previous pages will also appear in the back-of-book.

The masthead is the area in a magazine with the publication’s name (also called a title or flag), personnel (these are the masthead editors - editor-in-chief, managing editor, the most important people), year founded, address and whatever other important information they choose to include.

How to Submit
If you haven’t been given any direction keep it as simple as possible. No funky fonts. No colored paper or crazy folders or anything like that. Keep it simple. Double-space and use Times Roman or Arial, 12 point. Make sure you’ve read it over and have as few mistakes as you possibly can.

Unless you are told differently, these days it’s common to submit by email. You can attach the piece as a word document and paste it in the body of an email. Your job is to make things as easy as you can for the editor.

If you haven’t heard back from an editor in four weeks or more it’s ok to send a quick email as long as you are polite. Email is nicer than the telephone. With email you are letting the person answer in his or her own time, when the phone rings it forces someone to stop what he or she is doing and answer it. Remember: your editor can be your best friend; an editor can help you get more work at her publication or another one. So, be polite, be professional, and good luck!

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