At the risk of stating the obvious or, worse, being tautological, I think the mark of a professional writer is that he or she behaves professionally. What might professional behaviour look like?

• You expect to be paid.

• You belong to a professional association that represents writers.

• You take account of legal issues like copyright.

• You insist on a contract before agreeing to anything….

• … and you negotiate the terms rather than accepting the first offer made.

• You are continually honing your craft, whether through writing blogs, attending courses or reading books about the craft of writing.

• When online, you are courteous, respectful helpful. Authors have a reputation for being arrogant. Don’t give anyone reason to use you as an example of that!

Many of these points are covered in a couple of series on the Writers’ Know-how website — and if they haven’t been then they soon will be. Rather than put all the links to the other articles in the list above, which I think can be as disruptive as footnotes strewn throughout a text, I thought I’d let you explore for yourself. The two series are:

The Professional Writer

10 attributes of professional writers

In addition, you can find reviews of books from a writer’s perspective, as well as reviews of books about writing, by trawling through the Bookshelf.