A Beginner's Guide to Writing Terminology

Every person needs to know writing terminology in order to understand what rights to give up. Content has certain rights that we sell to others in the writing industry. Here are five tips for beginner's guide on writing terminology.

Be Careful Regarding Rights You Sell

You have certain rights that you sell to every article that is purchased by a company. You have two options in most cases. One option is exclusive rights which basically means selling all rights and gets you more money upfront. Exclusive rights generates more money for you since you no longer owe the content anymore whatsoever after selling all rights. Non-exclusive rights is giving the company a small amount of rights to your content that enables you to use it in the future to be re-published elsewhere, but can't be previously published.

Spec Submissions

You may be able to send articles to a company on spec. Spec is when you just send it in hopes that the company will like it enough to make you a price offer right then right there without jumping through hoops. Spec Submissions are just sending the article in with no query whatsoever. Many people have sold articles on spec. Don't worry about bypassing guidelines from time to time depending upon how good of a piece you've created.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is one of the worst things that someone can do in the writing industry. Plagiarism is when you copy someones work without their permission and slap your name on it to claim it as your own work. Plagiarism can cost you money in fines and attorney costs. A title can not be copyrighted though.

I've seen companies that want writers to write a article with the same title a zillion times.

Rejection Letter

You may get rejection letters in the mail or e-mail. Rejection is part of the writing industry when someone is telling you that the work isn't good enough or not needed at the moment. Rejection stings the first few times, but don't let it bug you forever. Rejection is not saying that you have crappy writing.

Keyword Article

Keywords are words placed into articles in order to be found in search engines. Keywords are often known as SEO in other words. Keywords are to be placed in the first paragraph of the article and through the body of the article. You have to have a certain keyword percentage in order to have a good ranking in the search engines.