Difference Between Professional And Amateur Writer

A professional writer is an amateur writer who didn't quit - Richard Bach. Every professional writer was an amateur writer once. What keeps a lot of new writers at the amateur stage is refusing to learn more about improving, learning and expanding their knowledge and talents. What a lot of professional writers do that amateurs don't do is learn as much as they can about the market they want to work and build a career within. This means understanding the freelance writing industry as a whole and then finding your niche within it. It means learning what parts of the publishing world interest you the most and how you can best form your career to fit within it.

Personally I just feel that the main difference between the 2 of them is the $$, and sometimes one not be discovered or Published yet. Yes, it is true that every person who thinks they can Write could be a published author, but there are a lot of people who can Write and maybe they just are too afraid to find out how good they are as well. For me, a Professional author is someone who has an Audience and a following while the Amatuer is someone just getting started to where even if their writing is really Good they have not had a chance to be discovered yet, so they are unsure of themselves and consider a lot of times their writing to not be up to par as well.

Professional literally means that you do something as your primary source of income, your profession. Often the words 'pro' and 'amateur' are used to indicate the quality of a talent, but this is not correct. If a writer has not been published yet, they should conduct themselves professionally if they have hopes of monetizing their work. Even if you have not made one penny from your writing, it is important to send clean and formal communications and to conduct yourself as a professional would. Being a professional means different things to different people. For example, I have published my novel and have sold a good amount of copies, but I will not consider myself to be a true professional until I have gotten a contract with a major publishing imprint. Until then I think of myself as an amateur who is making money. Christian M. Archer

I guess I am a professional writer in that I have been paid for something I have written. My wife, on the other hand, has started a writing project that I am proof reading and her ideas and prose bring a tear to my eye. She is, to all intents and purposes, an amateur (and English isn't even her first language) but somehow she is the better writer. Not that I would ever tell her that... :)