Do You Know Your FOB, LOI, and TK? Publishing Terms Freelancers Should Know

Like any business, freelancing has its own lingo--and that can be confusing for new writers. Here are 13 terms freelancers should know: 


All-rights contract: Contract where the publication purchases all rights to a piece, preventing you from reprinting it or making any additional money from it in the future. All-rights  contracts are becoming the industry standard, but you can sometimes negotiate changes to them. (I have a whole chapter on contracts in Dollars and Deadlines: Make Money Writing Articles for Print and Online Markets.) See work-for-hire.

Backup: The material you submit with a piece so that it can be fact-checked. This includes names and contact information for sources, links to online material, and copies of journal articles you cite or mention in a piece. See fact-checking. 

Clips: Short for clippings and refers to when writers actually cut their pieces out of newspapers or magazines. Refers to published samples of work, whether in print or online. 

Fact-checking: See backup. 

FOB: "Front of book," or the section of the publication that includes shorter, often news-driven items. A great place for new writers to break in.

Indemnification. Usually refers to a contract provision that requires writers to insure the publisher that the piece won't lead to legal claims. (Know what a fair one looks like? Check out the contracts chapter in Dollars and Deadlines: Make Money Writing Articles for Print and Online Markets.) 

Lead/lede: The opening to an article or query letter. The most important section of your query--if you can't catch the editor's attention, he or she will stop reading. (Six-Figure Freelancing: The Writer's Guide to Making More Money, Second Edition contains more than a dozen queries along with LOIs and other templates.) 

LOI: Letter of introduction. Another way to pitch a market; this focuses more on your background and experience than on pitching a particular idea the way you do with a query. 

On acceptance: a payment term that means you'll be paid when the story is accepted. See on publication.


On assignment: When an editor asks you to write a piece (e.g., an article or a blog post) on a specific topic for a specific amount of money by a specific deadline for a specific publication. Often the assignment is made in writing, but it can be verbal as well. (In this case, you'll want to follow up with an email confirming the details of your assignment.) 

On publication: a payment term that means you'll be paid when the piece is published. Freelancers prefer to be paid on acceptance, because you can't control when a piece will appear in print or online--or even if it's published yet.

On speculation: When an editor is willing to look at a piece you submit, but doesn't offer you a formal assignment. (See "on assignment.") Editors often ask inexperienced writers to write "on spec" as they're unproven, and this can be a great way to get your foot in the door if you're short on clips or experience. 

Query/query letter: A query or query letter is used to pitch an idea to a market. You can also "query" as a verb, as in "I queried her three weeks ago and just got a response." 

TK: a publishing term that means "to come." If an editor asks you to TK something, it means you need to double-check it or add missing information. I use TK when I'm writing a draft to remind myself that I need to fix or clean up a particular section or word. 

Work-for-hire: While legally different than an all-rights contract (technically only an employee can sign a work-for-hire agreement), it's a term for a contract that purchases all rights to a piece from the writer. 

**Got a publishing term or question for me? Email me at kelly at become body wise dot com or post a comment here and I'll be happy to answer! 

**Don't forget about my giveaway! Have you been meaning to buy the print edition of Dollars and Deadlines: Make Money Writing Articles for Print and Online Markets, or Six-Figure Freelancing: The Writer's Guide to Making More Money, Second Edition, but been putting it off? Make today the day.

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The Sell-Your-First-Article Series: The Final Steps

Welcome back to the Sell-your-First-Article series. (You'll find step 1, steps 2 through 5, step 6  and steps 7 and 8 here. At this stage, you've done most of the heavy lifting--the article has been pitched, sold, researched, and written. So what happens next?

Step 8: Turn the story in.
I turned in the story along with Dr. Jensen’s contact information and a copy of the study itself. This is called “backup,” or “fact-checking” material. Some publications don’t require backup, but I suggest you always have it on hand just in case. That will include the names and contact information of anyone you interview; copies of journal articles; Websites that you pulled information from (e.g., a page from the Centers for Disease Control that you cite in the article.) For longer stories that include more than one source, you typically turn in an additional, annotated copy of the story that indicates which sources provided the information in the story. 

Step 9: Get paid!
In this case, my editor was happy with the piece, so I didn’t need to do any revisions, which eliminated the need to rewrite/rework the piece (normally step #10). She put payment through without needing an invoice (normally step #11), and I received my check for $225 (normally step #13) four weeks later.

Step 10: The final step. Get the clip and notify my sources.
Five months later, the piece ran in Fitness. I made a copy for my portfolio, and notified Dr. Jensen about the piece, thanking him again for his help. If it would have appeared in a trade or custom publication that’s hard to locate, I would have sent him a copy of the article, but in this case, I simply told him the name and issue of the magazine, and the page number of the story (and his quote). Usually this will be step #14, but every story is different, and some require fewer steps to complete. 

Get the idea? A short piece like this isn’t complicated to pitch, research, and write—once you understand the steps to take. 
***Have you found this series of posts helpful? They were drawn from Dollars and Deadlines: Make Money Writing Articles for Print and Online Markets. You'll find real-life examples of another eleven articles pitched, researched, and written for markets to make it easy for you to launch your own article-writing career as well.   

The Sell-Your-First-Article Series, Steps 7 and 8

Welcome back to the Sell-your-First-Article series. (You'll find step 1, steps 2 through 5, and step 6 here.  Today we'll talk about what is often the hardest part of freelancing--the actual writing. Which brings us to step 7: 

Step 7: Write the piece.

To write the piece, I considered the following two questions:

1. What made the study interesting or surprising?

2. What “take-away” message was there for Fitness readers?

Obviously this was a short article, so I didn’t have a lot of space. This story was relatively easy to write, both because it was short, and because the subject matter was fairly simple. The challenge was “writing tight,” or keeping my story succinct while adequately covering the topic. I kept my lead short, described the research, and included a quote from Dr. Jensen. It took me several drafts to get my original version, which was more than 250 words, cut to within word count. It had been assigned at 150 words and I wrote a 163-word piece. My rule of thumb is to get as close to word count as you can, but stay within 10 percent of assigned word count no matter what.

The finished piece I turned in is below, with my comments in brackets. Note that my name, address and contact information are in the upper left-hand corner. The word count and rights being sold are included in the upper right-hand corner. Then the title of the piece and the byline are centered below that, before the story starts. You should single-space this information and double-space the piece itself.

Kelly James-Enger                                                   163 words 

[street address]                                                       Rights per written contract

[city, state, zip]

[phone]

[email]

Fidgeting Fat Away?

by

Kelly James-Enger

Maybe those enviably skinny people who can eat anything without gaining weight simply can’t sit still. [Very short lead—this is a very short piece, remember?]

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic’s Endocrine Research Unit fed sixteen volunteers 1,000 extra calories a day for eight weeks while strictly monitoring their activities. While all participants gained weight, on average they burned off about half of those extra calories through increased non-exercise activity thermogenesis (“NEAT”), which includes fidgeting, maintaining posture, shifting position, and other spontaneous physical activities. The range varied significantly—participants whose NEAT kicked into high gear expended more calories and gained less weight while others—with smaller NEAT increases—expended fewer calories, putting on more weight.  [Here’s the heart of the piece—explaining what the study revealed.]

“It looks like NEAT can be dramatically and rapidly induced in some people by eating too much,” says researcher Michael Jensen, Ph.D. We’re not recommending fidgeting as a weight-loss technique, but the study suggests that even minor physical activities—like stretching when you’re watching TV or crossing and uncrossing your legs during a marathon meeting—can add up. [Live quote from one of the researchers, and a short closing statement.]

-30-

[The number 30, or ###, indicates the end of the piece.]

Step 8: Turn the story in.

                I turned in the story along with Dr. Jensen’s contact information and a copy of the study itself. This is called “backup,” or “fact-checking” material. Some publications don’t require backup, but I suggest you always have it on hand just in case. That will include the names and contact information of anyone you interview; copies of journal articles; websites that you pulled information from (e.g., a page from the Centers for Disease Control that you cite in the article.) For longer stories that include more than one source, you typically turn in an additional, annotated copy of the story that indicates which sources provided the information in the story. 
               What comes next? Biting my nails and waiting to hear from my editor. Stay tuned for the remaining steps in the process. And don't forget about my free teleseminar with Rochelle Melander on Wednesday! 
                **In the next post, we'll talk about how to start researching this short piece. In the meantime, Dollars and Deadlines: Make Money Writing Articles for Print and Online Markets, from which this post is drawn, in now in print. (Prefer the Kindle edition?) 
               If you're interested in writing articles, be sure to sign up for the Write Now! Mastermind class on Wednesday, March 27, at noon central time. Rochelle Melander will be interviewing me for How To Pitch And Sell Articles To A Variety Of Freelance Markets. The call is free, but you need to sign up at http://www.writenowcoach.com/resources/write-now-mastermind.html. I hope to "see" you on the call!