Mark Terry

Thursday, January 04, 2007

The Devil's Publishing Dictionary

January 4, 2007
Author Lynn Viehl has a hilarious dictionary posted on her blog today she's dubbed The Devil's Publishing Dictionary.

Advance - a sum paid to the author's agent after contract signing, as soon as the editor puts in a payment request to accounting, which is misplaced for three weeks to three months, re-requested, routed to senior editor for approval, misplaced again or completely forgotten until agent's fourth inquiry. The author may or may not see 30% of the agreed-upon advance, less that 15% owed to the agent, within a year of signing, upon publication of the contracted work, or when the author starves to death while living under a bridge, whichever comes first.

Blurbs - ringing but patently false endorsements of a book by buddies of the author, the author herself coyly pretending to be another author by using a pseudonym, or carefully-edited segments of bad reviews. Also known as cover quotes.


Check it out.

Cheers,
Mark Terry

3 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

I have one.

Synopsis: a book report on your own damn book. Known to cause physical pain and weeping.

9:38 AM  
Blogger Mark Terry said...

Ron,
To quote my own agent on synopses: "Keep it short. Agents and editors hate them."

From my own pov, I can't imagine if you've got even 20 pages of the manuscript why you would want to read a detailed synopsis, so I've followed my agent's advice and kept mine to about a page.

9:55 AM  
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