Author, Writer, Blogger - it's all the same write?

I occasionally get asked by people what the difference is between an Author and a Writer and a blogger. I guess on the surface of it, certainly for the first two the difference can appear to be semantic. But in this world of citizen publishing I actually do have distinct definitions for them. I use these when talking to clients about "influence" so this is only from that perspective. I'm sure I'll annoy a few people with my definitions but hey ho.  So here they are:

Author
A person who has had a book published by a publishing company. Does not include self-publish or publish on demand books. My reasoning for this is very simple, a publishing company has to invest anywhere between $20,000 & $40,000 to bring a non-fiction book to market - depending on the book and the Author. So to be an Author you not only have to be able to have an idea, convey that idea and complete a book but you have to be able to convince someone else to invest in that concept and put their name on the cover alongside yours.

Writer
A person who has been published by someone other than themselves, in short form,  or has self published a book or e-book. I include self publish here alongside being published by others because of the investment (usually financial) that a Writer makes to self publish, even outlets like Lulu involve a certain amount of outlay.  The distinction of "short form" is that they have not, as yet been invested in, though they may well have been recompensed, e.g. published for money in a journal, a journalist for example is a Writer who is paid for their work but is not an Author based solely on that work.

Blogger
A person who writes short form in a primarily self-maintained website. This is of course the most popular form of getting ones thoughts out to the masses. Many people actually make very good money from doing this and just because it is listed last does not imply a hierarchy of content creators, though I am sure some Authors would disagree with me. There are definitely bloggers who make more money from their blogs than many Authors make from their books, especially in the Non-Fiction space and have many more readers too.

So those are my definitions, can you be more than one, absolutely - I am. But I think this type of definition helps clarify the differences for people who use the terms interchangeably.

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