Language is power, and to that end we at The Editorial Department have come up with a glossary of commonly-used terms and abbreviations in the book publishing industry. This is a quick, handy guide (in no particular order) to many of the terms that writers will come across during all stages of editing and publishing. Enjoy and learn!
General Publishing Terms
Copyright: the “right to copy”, or reproduce, intellectual property; original writing is copyrighted the instant it is created with no additional action needed
Printer: produces (prints) the physical copies of the book
Publisher: a company or entity that owns the right to distribute and sell a book; includes pre-press activities such as editing, proofreading, typesetting, and cover design
Distributor: a company that warehouses and ships books to bookstores, libraries, and retailers; the largest book distributors include Ingram and Baker & Taylor
Bookseller: a retail store that sells books; includes Barnes & Noble and independent bookstores
Editor: someone who selects, prepares, corrects, organizes, condenses, and modifies a piece of writing; can work freelance or with a publishing company
Acquisitions Editor / Acquisitions Board: an editor or group of people at a publishing house responsible for acquiring new titles
Publicist: someone who generates and manages publicity for a public figure (author), business, or work such as a book or film
Literary Agent: a person who represents a book author for negotiating sales, rights, and contracts; is paid by commission on author’s royalties, usually 10-20%
Slush Pile: unsolicited manuscripts sent to an editor or literary agent
Backlist: books that have been in print for some time but continue to sell steadily
Returns: unsold books that are returned to the publisher by the bookseller for credit; usually destroyed
Book and Book Design Terms
Foreword: a short introduction at the beginning of a book, usually written by another author
Back Cover Copy: The text on the back cover or inside flap of a book that “sells” the story to potential readers
Galley: a proof copy of a manuscript, can be bound or unbound (loose)
ARC: Advance Reading/Review Copy, a proof copy of a book produced by the publisher in advance of the publication date and distributed for marketing purposes
Proof: a non-final typeset version of a manuscript that still contains typographical errors
POD/Print-On-Demand: printing books one order at a time using a digital press.
Offset Printing: a printing technique using an etched metal plate applied to a rubber surface, then pressed to paper; used for mass print runs and producing large quantities of books at one time
Trim Size: the size/dimensions of the book; where the pages are cut by the printer
Bleed: area that extends beyond the trim of a book or cover
Folio: page number
Book Block: the full interior content of the book, normally in PDF
Casebound: another term for a hardcover book
Case Laminate: a laminated hardcover, often without a jacket (seen usually for textbooks and children’s books)
Dust Jacket/Dust Cover: the outer wrap on a hardcover
Deckle edge: when the outside edges of a book are untrimmed for a feathery effect; often used in hardcover fiction
Fleuron: an ornamental typographical element or glyph (character) used to separate borders or sections of text; looks like this ❧
Trade paperback: a high-quality softcover book
Mass market paperback: a small, inexpensive book binding format
Perfect bound: the binding of a paperback where the pages are glued directly to the spine
Resolution: the DPI (dots per inch) in a printed image, or the PPI (pixels per inch) for a digital image; the minimum quality for digital-to-print is 300 pixels per inch
Publishing Contract Language and Terminology
Royalty: the percentage of a book’s revenue that a publisher pays to the author; typically 5-8%
Advance: royalty money given to an author prior to publication, often in increments at the signing of the contract, the author’s finished delivery of the edited manuscript, and so on
“Earn Out”: when the book sells enough copies that the author is entitled to royalties beyond the initial advance
Option clause: part of a publishing contract that gives the publisher the right to the first exclusive look at an author’s next book; also called “right of first refusal”
List Price: the retail price
Discount: the percentage off the list price at which booksellers buy the book (results in the wholesale price); industry standard discount is 55%
Short Discount: a less-than-standard wholesale discount (from 20% to 40%)
Pub Date: the publication date, after which the book will be available for purchase
Publishing Classifications
Indie Publishing: also known as independent publishing and self-publishing; when an author takes charge of the publication process and retains the rights to distribute and sell their work
Traditional Publishing: when an author sells the rights to their book to a publishing company
Big Five: refers to the five biggest publishers in the United States: Penguin Random House, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, and Macmillan.
Small Press: a small local, regional, or genre-specific publishing house
Academic Press: a publishing house associated with a university or educational institution
Vanity Press: a company that an author pays to publish their book; falls under self-publishing
General Terminology
ALA: American Library Association; Booklist is the ALA’s review service
CBA: Originally the Christian Bookseller’s Association, now the Association for Christian Retail; members include publishers such as Bethany House, Tyndale, and Zondervan
PW: Publisher’s Weekly, the trade magazine for the publishing industry
KDP: Kindle Direct Publishing, Amazon’s service for self-publishers to publish their e-books in the Kindle store
E-book: the electronic, digital version of a book that displays on a computer screen or an e-reader
E-reader: a device that displays electronic books (e-books); the most popular include the Kindle and the Nook
Imprint: the name of a book’s publisher
ISBN: International Standard Book Number that identifies the book and is required for retail sales; each edition and format of a book has its own unique ISBN
Graph: a short term for paragraph
Stet: In Latin, “let it stand”; a proofreader’s term for when a suggested change in a manuscript should be disregarded and the original is correct
Typesetting: the process of preparing text for printing, including page layout
Ms: shorthand for manuscript / Mss: manuscripts
WIP/Work-In-Progress: an incomplete manuscript or project
pp: shorthand for pages; for example, if a book is 246 pages, it would be “246 pp”
711510: the IRS code for “independent artists, writers, and performers” for when you report your income from writing
