Tuesday, November 17, 2009

The more you know, the funnier this is

Glossary of Publishing Terms

17 comments:

Susan M. Boyer said...

Hilarious. My favorite: "MAINSTREAM FICTION: The pretense that there is a group of readers who can be reached through writing that is sufficiently unspecific as to exclude no one."

Annette Lyon said...

Crimeny, good thing I wasn't drinking anything.

My favorites: Publication Date, Foreign Market, Line Editor, and Author Photo.

Definitely passing this link on to my critique group.

Artemis Grey said...

Okay, I'm serious about getting published and being successful. But that made me snort coffee through my nose and I'm SO going to print it out and tack it on the wall to remind me to laugh about that which I love!

Rebecca Knight said...

This made my morning! My favorite: FANTASY: An author's sales aspirations ;).

The Plumber's Wife said...

I should have read the other comments before reading this that way I would have known to put my coffee cup down.

Favorite - Kill Fee: The cost of a contract on an author or editor.

Great read to start the morning :)

Southpaw said...

That was hysterical. I loved the author phot myself...and fantasy and novella.

BJ said...

"BLURB: A brief noise that embarrasses everyone."

Erm. Excuse me. Ate too much at lunch.

Margaret Yang said...

My favorite--

Library of Congress: Best place to hide from a Congressman.

suzie townsend said...

so funny :)

Lydia Smith said...

Funny stuff.

Kimberly Kincaid said...

Faves: Rejection letter (form) and Kill Fee. I'm still giggling...

Wilhem Spihntingle said...

I like this one. AUTHOR PHOTO: Pictorial fiction. Authors always choose photos that emphasize that quality in which they feel most deficient.

I remember a Law and Order episode when D'Onfrio mentions the writers pose where the hand placement is used to hide the double chin.

lora96 said...

Love it!

Thanks!

dylan said...

Dear Ms. Reid ,

And yet...

No definition for Query Letter!

Perhaps we should help. I smell contest.

dylan

dylan said...

Dear Ms. Reid,

Here's a shot - Query Letter:

1. Oddish Missive.

2. A viral mass-mailing contrived to spoil perfectly good hangovers.

3. Hay added to a stack to help conceal publishable manuscripts from flailing agents.

dylan

Anonymous said...

Loved "Author Photo-- Pictorial fiction. Authors always choose photos that emphasize that quality in which they feel most deficient."

Also "ROYALTY: The glamorous heads of large publishing houses, also known as GLITERATI."

Thanks for posting that!

Uke Xensen said...

Tom Christensen here, author of the glossary. It has been much linked to, but you might like to know that your post has sent the most traffic to the glossary -- 641 visits over the past 30 days according to google analytics. Thanks!

The best I can think of as a definition for "query letter" (as requested by dylan in a previous comment) at the moment is this:

Query letter: A literary genre in which the most important sentence ends with a proposition.