Publishing and readership terms, explained

Terms from A to Z

• Advance: money a publisher pays an author up front, set against the royalties the book is expected to earn.
• ARC: an advance reader copy, sometimes called an advance review copy. It’s an early edition, often uncorrected, sent to reviewers, booksellers and other early readers before publication.
• Backlist: a publisher’s or author’s older titles that are still in print and on sale.
• Back matter: the pages after the main text, such as acknowledgments, an author’s note, endnotes, a bibliography, an index or an “about the author” page.
• Beta reader: someone who reads a draft before submission or publication and tells you honestly, as a reader, how it felt to read.
• Blurb: a short piece of selling copy on a book’s cover or retailer page, written to make the right reader want the book. The word is also widely used for an endorsement (source).
• Book proposal: the document that sells a nonfiction book before it’s written. It usually holds an overview, a case for the market, a chapter outline and sample chapters.
• Comp title: a comparison (or comparable) title, meaning a recent, similar book named in a pitch to show where yours would sit on the shelf.
• Copy edit: a detailed pass through a manuscript to correct grammar, spelling, punctuation and consistency, and to apply the publisher’s house style.
• Developmental edit: big-picture editing that looks at structure, plot, pacing, character or argument before anyone polishes sentences. It’s also called a structural edit.
• Double opt-in: a sign-up process in which a new subscriber confirms by clicking a link sent to their inbox. It keeps out mistyped and fake addresses, and records that each person asked to join.
• Earn out: a book earns out when the royalties it has earned exceed its advance. From then on, the author receives further royalty payments.
• Endorsement: a short quote of praise from another writer, an expert or a publication, used on a cover or in marketing.
• Fediverse: a network of independent social media servers that exchange posts through a shared standard, ActivityPub. People on different servers can follow one another, and Mastodon is one service that takes part.
• Frontlist: a publisher’s new titles for the current season, which usually get the bulk of its marketing.
• Front matter: the pages before the main text, such as the title page, copyright page, dedication, contents, epigraph and foreword.
• Hashtag: a word or phrase preceded by #, which groups social media posts on a subject so people can search for or follow it.
• Imprint: a brand name under which a publisher issues a particular list of books. Large publishing groups run many imprints, each with its own editors and character.
• ISBN: an International Standard Book Number, the 13-digit number that identifies one edition of a book (source). Each format, such as hardback, paperback or ebook, needs its own.
• Jacket copy: the selling text on a book’s cover or dust jacket flaps, usually the blurb plus a short author bio. It’s also called cover copy or flap copy.
• Keywords: search terms supplied to a retailer with a book’s details, to help it appear when readers search for those words.
• Lead title: one of the few books a publisher chooses to push hardest in a season, with the biggest marketing budget and its sales team’s closest attention.
• Line edit: sentence-by-sentence editing for style, clarity, rhythm and word choice. It sits between a developmental edit and a copy edit.
• Literary agent: a professional who represents writers, sells their work to publishers and negotiates their contracts, usually for a commission on what the writer earns.
• Logline: a one-sentence pitch that names the main character or subject, what’s at stake, and the question that makes a listener want to know more.
• Metadata: the information that describes a book to retailers, libraries and search engines, including its title, subtitle, author, description, categories, keywords, ISBN and price.
• Newsletter: a regular email sent to people who have asked to receive it. For writers, it’s a direct line to readers that doesn’t depend on any social network.
• Platform: in the publishing trade, the audience a writer can already reach through their work, profile, expertise or following. When agents ask whether a writer “has platform,” this is what they mean, most often for nonfiction.
• Print on demand: a printing method that produces each copy when it’s ordered, so no stock has to be printed in advance or stored. Often shortened to POD.
• Proofreading: the final check of typeset pages for errors that slipped through earlier edits, from typos to layout faults.
• Pull quote: a short, striking line lifted from a review, an interview or the text itself and displayed prominently, such as on a cover or in an ad.
• Query letter: a short letter, usually about a page, that introduces you and your book to a literary agent and asks them to read it.
• Rights: the permissions to publish a work in a given form, language and territory for a set period, which an author licenses to a publisher.
• Royalty: the author’s share of the income from each copy sold, expressed as a percentage of either the list price or the publisher’s net receipts.
• Sell sheet: a one-page summary of a book for booksellers, librarians and sales reps. It carries the cover, a short description, selling points and details such as ISBN, price and publication date.
• Slush pile: the backlog of unsolicited submissions waiting to be read at an agency or publisher. These days it’s mostly an inbox.
• Subsidiary rights: rights beyond the main edition, such as translation, audio, film and television, serial (extracts in newspapers and magazines) and book club rights. They’re often licensed separately.
• Synopsis: a summary of a whole book, ending included, written for agents and editors. Its job is to show that the story holds together, so it gives everything away.
• Tagline: a short, memorable line used on covers, posters and ads to sell a book’s mood or promise.
• Trim size: the finished page dimensions of a printed book after the paper is trimmed, such as 6 by 9 inches.