What is a List of Publications, and Why Does It Matter

What is a List of Publications, and Why Does It Matter For freelancers who write short pieces, a list of publications (LP) where weve successfully appeared is essential. Creating it may be a dull left-brain task, but even if you have few publications so far, starting an LP gives you advantages for your career. Heres what to include in your list: Articles, essays, stories, blogs, guest blogs, poems, interviews, book reviews, forewords, introductions, letters to editors of well-known newspapers, and, of course, books youve published. Include radio interviews, live talks, and panels youve participated in. There are a few ways to organize the list: I like to organize mine GENRE: Writing how-to. ARTICLE: Writing Blocked? Try These Six Simple Tools. 850 Words. Romance Writers Report, March 2014, vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 21-22. And an online one: GENRE: Writing how-to. ARTICLE: Told and Retold: Reinventing Classic Fairy Tales, 1560 Words. Childrens Book Insider, July 2014, pp. 4-5. http://cbiclubhouse.com/clubhouse/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/2014-07.pdf Resist the urge to include everything youve ever written. Dont add pieces accepted, even paid, but never published. Dont add letters you published in newsletters or newspapers. Where you store your LP depends on your goals: I keep my master LP in a computer file labeled List of Credits. I post a few pieces on my website. Hope Clark wisely points out that these pieces can come up in a Google search. I use recent publications for my email signature and queries. You can also link to pieces from Facebook. The key is to sprinkle discriminately, not dump to brag. From your LP, you can extract an Abbreviated List of Pubs (ALP) in your queries to editors using what applies to each editors needs. The ALP can: 1. Show youre a professional. 2. Demonstrate your organizational ability, consistency, and attention to details. Editors will assume youll use these qualities for their assignments. 3. Provide verifiable evidence of your credits. 4. Show your seriousness, marketing savvy, and ingenuity. In Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer, Jenna Glatzer counsels about judicious ALP choices: cite   credits for publications in which youve had great relationships with editors (they compare notes). And avoid overly creative (read: fabricated) entries. 5. Show your interests and flexibility. Editors may then consider you for other types of assignments. A magazine editor rejected my article about journal writing, but noting my childrens publication credits, she invited a piece on childrens writing. For you, an LP can: 1. Be a record of your completed pieces. 2. Remind you of publications youve forgotten and how youve undersold yourself. 3. Prompt you to recall genres youve written in and would like to explore further. 4. Give you a convenient source for extracting credits for many purposes. 5. Enable you to announce everywhere, Ive published, oh, about 3,562 articles. 6. On dark days, it shows your line of your progress, motivates you to write and submit, and reminds you of your achievements. Your LP is a gift to yourself disguised as grunt work. Easy to keep current, your LP will continue to boost your confidence as you add to it and quietly crow over your latest successes.