Resources

Glossary

This glossary of publishing terms is a simple look-up guide to key publishing terms, abbreviations and acronyms

A

AAP

Association of American Publishers

Add-on

Extra value added into a product, for example a DVD in the back of a printed book

Advance

Sum paid in advance to the author in anticipation of the author earning royalties from sales of their work. Advances may be paid on signature of contract, delivery of the typescript, and on publication.

Advance copy

Printed copy available ahead of publication. Advance copies are sent to the author and used in marketing.

Aga saga

Novel set amongst the Aga-owning English middle class

Agent

A literary agent may act on behalf of an author and negotiate the contract for a book with the publisher

Aggregator

An aggregator will license the rights to distribute content online from a variety of publishers

Airport edition

Export paperback edition of a book sold at airport shops ahead of the main paperback edition

AI sheet

Advance Information sheet containing essential bibliographic and marketing information

APC

An article processing, or publishing, charge

App

Application for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers

B

BA

Booksellers Association of the United Kingdom & Ireland

Backlist

A publisher’s established titles; compare frontlist

BIC

Book Industry Communication

Big Deal

A large bundle of journals sold by a publisher as one package

Blad

Sample printed section

Blurb

The selling copy that appears on the back cover or front jacket flap of the book

Book club

Traditionally a mail order bookseller; now also a reading group

Born digital

Products originated in digital form

BRIC

Shorthand for the fast-growing economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China

Bulk

A paper’s thickness

Bundling

Journals are often packaged up into bundles of titles for sale to institutions such as university libraries; also a printed book and ebook may be bundled together

C

Chick lit

Genre of fiction principally aimed at single women in their 20s or early 30s

CIP

Cataloguing in Publication

CIVETS

Shorthand for the second wave of fast-growing economies of Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa

CLA

CMS

Content management system

Co-edition

An additional part of the print run sold to a third party. There are both English and foreign language co-editions

Commissioning

Creating a new project and signing up an author; or acquiring the rights to publish a work from the author, their agent or another publisher

Contract

Legal agreement between the author and publisher, outlining the rights acquired by the publisher, financial terms, and the responsibilities of both author and publisher

Co-publication

Joint publishing agreement between two or more companies

Copy-editing

Editing the author’s manuscript with regard to style and consistency to eliminate errors and improve the text for the reader

Copyright

The protection which gives authors and other creative artists legal ownership of their work – it establishes their work as their personal, exclusive property. The period of copyright in the UK is 70 years. © is the copyright symbol

Coursepack

A collection of chapters and articles, photocopied or accessed electronically, for teaching use in higher education

Cover-mount

Special edition of a book attached to the front of a magazine, or bundled with a newspaper

CRM

Customer relationship management

Crossover title

A children’s book with an adult market

CSR

Corporate social responsibility

CTP

Computer to Plate

CUP

Cambridge University Press

D

DAD

Digital Asset Distribution

DAM

Digital Asset Management

Depreciation

Reducing the value of stock in the company’s accounts

Digital rights management (DRM)

The technical means by which the access to digital content is controlled

Discount

Publishers give retailers a discount off the recommended price to encourage them to list or stock their titles

DK

Dorling Kindersley

DNB

Dictionary of National Biography

DOI

Digital Object Identifier

Dummy

A mock-up of the final printed book, mainly used for selling illustrated books to retailers or overseas customers

E

Ebook

Electronic book; a vanilla ebook echoes – or is a straight transfer from - print; an enhanced ebook has added value such as audio and video

ECM

Enterprise content management

EDItEUR

International standards organization for the book trade

Embargo

Restriction placed by a publisher on a book to prevent it either being sold or covered in the media prior to its official publication date

Enhanced ebook

Ebook with additional features such as audio and video

EFL

English as a foreign language

ELT

English language teaching

EMEA

Europe, the Middle East and Africa

EPC

Educational Publishers Council of the Publishers Association

F

Frontlist

A publisher’s new titles; compare backlist

G

GLN

Global Location Number

Goodwill

Assets that contribute to a publisher’s competitive advantage, including its brand and employees

H

House style

The set style imposed during the editing of a text – elements include spelling, grammar, capitalization and hyphenation

HSS

Humanities and Social Sciences

HTML

HyperText Markup Language

I

Institutional repository

A digital collection of research papers by members of an institution such as a university

Intellectual property (IP)

A publisher’s IP includes its copyrights, licences and trade marks

IPR

Intellectual property rights

IRI

Industry Returns Initiative (UK)

ISBN

International Standard Book Number

ISSN

International Standard Serial Number

Imprint

A list of books within a publisher’s overall publishing programme. Each imprint will have its own flavour and direction

J

Jisc

Formerly termed the Joint Information Systems Committee, Jisc is funded by the post-16 and higher education councils of the UK

JPEG

Joint Photographic Experts Group

K

N/A

L

Licence

A licence gives a publisher the sole, exclusive right to publish an author’s work and sell it as widely as possible. The publisher also licenses a book to other publishers, for example for translation. A non-exclusive licence enables the publisher to sell content – for example for digital use - to a number of companies

Licensed publishing

An exclusive licence granted to a publisher to exploit in book form a product or character

List-building

Taking a strategic view of commissioning in order to create a new publishing list or expand the present publishing programme

Litho

Offset lithography. This form of printing is still common for long print runs

LMS

Learning Management System

Long Tail

First proposed by Chris Anderson in 2004 in Wired magazine, the idea that there is greater total value in the long tail of less popular products (available over the internet) than in the more widely available hits

M

Manuscript (MS)

The author’s version of the work; also typescript. It was originally handwritten

MARC

MAchine Readable Cataloguing

Marketing mix

Product, price, place and promotion

Mass market paperback

‘A format’ paperback – 178 x 110 mm; compare trade paperback

Metadata

Data about data. This enables content to be categorized and found more easily in online searches

MOOC

Massive open online course

Moral rights

Additional to copyright, these statutory rights granted to the author are the right to paternity, the right of integrity, the right to prevent false attribution, and the right to privacy

N

NBA

Net Book Agreement (UK)

NBI sheet

New book information sheet – also known as AI

NSR

Net sales revenue

O

OA

Open Access

OEBF

Open Ebook Format

OED

Oxford English Dictionary

OER

Open Educational Resources

ONIX

ONline Information eXchange

Online marketing

Use of the internet for marketing. Activities include the use of social media, search engine optimization, email marketing, and website promotion

On-screen editing

Copy-editing on screen rather than on a paper print-out

Ontology

The structure of a set of data

OUP

Oxford University Press

Overheads

The ongoing costs of running a business, for example office costs and salaries

P

PA

Publishers Association (UK)

Packager

Separate from a publisher, a packager supplies an edited and designed book for the publisher to market and sell

Patron-driven acquisition

Free access is given to content, for example a set of ebooks, and payment is then triggered by usage past a certain threshold

Pay per view

Pay as you go model for content, e.g. purchasing a single article from a journal or a chapter from a book

Pbook

Printed book

Peer review

The evaluation by reviewers of an academic author’s work

Positioning

Placing the product in the mind of the consumer

PDA

Personal digital assistant; also patron-driven acquisition

PDF

Portable Document Format

PLS

Private language schools

POD

Print on demand. Digital printing enables the economic printing of short runs. True print on demand is the ability to print single copies to order

POS

Point of sale

Post-print

Journal article as revised after peer review; compare pre-print

PR

Public relations

Pre-print

Commonly accepted as the version of an article submitted to a journal, before peer review; compare post-print

Print run

The number of copies printed of a pbook

PS

PostScript

Production values

The quality of the paper, design, printing, binding and cover of a book

Proofreading

Reading proofs of a book in order to spot mistakes missed at the copy-editing stage as well as any errors introduced in the design and production stages. Proofs can be read against the original copy or by eye (with no reference to the original version)

Proposal

A document outlining the content and market potential of a proposed title

Puff

Endorsement used on the book’s cover, ahead of the book being reviewed

Q

N/A

R

REF

Research Excellence Framework, UK

Returns

Unsold books sent back to the publisher by the retailer

RFID

Radio Frequency Identification

Royalty

The share of the income from a book paid by the publisher to the author; royalty rates will vary according to format and the source of the income (e.g. from subsidiary rights)

S

SAN

Standard Address Number

Schema

The structure of an XML document

Serial rights

The right to sell selections from a work to a newspaper or magazine. First serial rights cover extracts before the book’s publication; second serial rights are for extracts published on or after publication

Smart content

Content with an added layer of semantic meaning

STM

Scientific, Technical and Medical. STEM adds in Engineering

Subsidiary rights

Rights a publisher can acquire in addition to the volume rights of publishing their own edition as an ebook and pbook – examples of subsidiary rights are translation rights and serial rights

T

TIFF

Tagged Image File Format

Trade paperback

‘B format’ paperback – 198 x 129 mm; compare mass market paperback

Trade publishing

Publishing of books that are sold through the book trade; also known as consumer publishing

U

Unicode

An encoding system which gives a unique identity to each character, ‘no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the language’. (unicode.com, accessed 1 October 2007)

USP

Unique sales proposition – what makes a book stand out from the competition

V

VAT

Value Added Tax

Version of Record

Published version of a journal article with the final formatting

Viral marketing

Spreading a marketing message using social networks

VLE

Virtual Learning Environment

W

Wasting

Disposing of unsold stock

Web 2.0

The new generation of the Web in which users upload as well as download

Widget

Mini Web plug-in with sample content that can be emailed or copied on to the user’s social networking pages

Wiki

Collaborative website. The name derives from the Hawaiian word wikiwiki – quick

WIPO

World Intellectual Property Organization

WOM

Word of mouth

X

XML

Extensible Markup Language

Y

N/A

Z

N/A

'Publishers and would-be publishers must be equally prepared to face the future and become not just instruments of publication but instigators and innovators in their own right. Only then can they disprove the sentiment expressed by Cyril Connolly in Enemies of Promise (1903) that - "As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers, so those with irrational fear of life become publishers".'

Adrian Moore, A Short History of Future Publishing (1972).

'Publishing, or perhaps I ought to say, Book-Publishing, is quite different from what most people apparently suppose. The young man who regards it as a pleasantly dilettante occupation suitable for somebody who does not know what he wants to do but likes books, is under an illusion.'

Stanley Unwin, The Truth about Publishing (1960 edition).

'It is difficult to pigeonhole the publisher: he will care more about his product than an advertising copywriter; be too much of a gambler to become a successful merchant banker; too full of blind spots and optimism to be a lawyer; and his essential - if unreal - sense of his own importance would preclude diplomacy as a career. He will be part impresario, part missionary. He will not himself create like a composer, a painter or a choreographer, and if he writes at all he may make an unsuitable spectacle of himself, "like a cow in a milk bar", as Arthur Koestler said.'

Anthony Blond, The Publishing Game (1971).

'After failing to get anywhere as a film director I decided that I would after all try publishing. ... The house I focused on was Andre Deutsch and I was thrilled to be granted an interview by A.D. (as he was called) himself. He was quick to tell me that he had no job to offer. I, in turn, told him that "Money was no object." At that he asked when I could start. We settled for the following Monday.'

Tom Maschler, Publisher (2005).

'Trade book publishing is by nature a cottage industry, decentralized, improvisational, personal; best performed by small groups of like-minded people, devoted to their craft, jealous of their autonomy, sensitive to the needs of writers and to the diverse interests of readers. If money were their primary goal, these people would probably have chosen other careers.'

Jason Epstein, Book Business: Publishing past, present and future (2001).

'The person with whom the writer wants to be in touch is his reader: if he could speak to him directly, without a middleman, that is what he would do. The publisher exists only because turning someone's written words into a book (or rather, into several thousand books) is a complicated and expensive undertaking, and so is distributing the books, once made, to booksellers and libraries.'

Diana Athill, Stet (2000).

'It is not enough to publish a good and marketable book, or even a number of them; I feel that one of the best advertisements for a publishing firm is for that firm to develop a distinct character which shall become recognised by the trade and the public.'

Memo from T. S. Eliot to his fellow directors at Faber, 9 December 1931.

'It is certainly the duty of any publishing firm which pretends to other interests and motives than mere commercial prosperity, to publish books which go against the current of the moment: but in each instance that demands that at least one member of the firm should have the conviction that this is the thing that needs saying at the moment. I can't see any reason of prudence or caution to prevent anybody from publishing this book - if he believed in what it stands for.'

Letter from T. S. Eliot to George Orwell, turning down Animal Farm, 13 July 1944.

'"I'm afraid it's rather full of marginal balloons and interlineations, but you see, I suddenly realized that I could work out a big improvement in my notation, so I've had to alter it all through. I expect", she added wistfully, "the printers will be rather angry with me." Harriet privately agreed with her, but said comfortingly that the Oxford University Press was no doubt accustomed to deciphering the manuscripts of scholars.'

Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night (1935).

'Long ago I used to think they mattered a lot. Then I changed my mind, thinking that blurbs don't signal much about the quality of the book, but at least they signal something about the quality of the author's friends or acquaintances who were willing to blurb the book. Lately, I've come to believe that they really don't matter at all, since most readers see blurbs as having about the same level of integrity as a used car salesman's personal promise that the car you're about to buy is A-OK.'

Stephen Dubner, author of Freakonomics, on using puffs from other writers in cover blurbs, Guardian, 22 September 2008.

'It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore. ... Forty per cent of the people in the US read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.'

Steve Jobs on ebook readers, quoted in New York Times, 15 January 2008.

‘The book is like the spoon: once invented, it cannot be bettered.’

Umberto Eco, from This is Not the End of the Book: A conversation (2011), curated by Jean-Philippe de Tonnac.

'I don't like them [ebook readers]. I like holding a book in my hand, and I like turning the pages. But I think, as long as people read, I almost don't care. Whatever lifts your skirt.'

Terry McMillan, author of Waiting to Exhale, quoted in Time, 13 September 2010.

'I suspect many readers assume books spring full blown from the heads of writers, when in fact many of them spring, half baked, from the heads of brilliant editors.'

Michael Pollan, from his book In Defence of Food (2008), page 202.

'His expectations for his first book had been both cautious and modest, and they had been appropriate; one reviewer had called it "pedestrian" and another had called it "a competent survey." ... After a while he tired of seeing it; but he never thought of it, and his authorship, without a sense of wonder and disbelief at his own temerity and at the responsibility he had assumed.'

From the novel, Stoner (1965), by John Williams, chapter 6.

'"I've read your novel," he said. "We'd like to publish it. Would it be possible for you to look in here at eleven?" My flu was gone in that moment and never returned. Nothing in a novelist's life later can equal that moment - the acceptance of his first book [for Greene in 1928]. Triumph is unalloyed by any doubt of the future. Mounting the wide staircase in the elegant eighteenth-century house in Great Russell Street I could have no foreboding of the failures and frustrations of the next ten years.'

Graham Greene, A Sort of Life (1971).

'They're a funny lot, these publishers. They publish all this left-wing stuff because only radicals read, and then they send out the printing work to Hong Kong for the cheap labour.'

from Barbara Trapido's novel, Brother of the More Famous Jack (1982).

'Being published by the Oxford University Press is rather like being married to a duchess: the honour is almost greater than the pleasure.'

The historian G. M. Young (1882-1959), quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations.

ALVY
I'm so tired of spending evenings making fake insights with people who work for Dysentery.

ROBIN
Commentary.

ALVY
Oh, really, I heard that Commentary and Dissent had merged and formed Dysentery.

From Woody Allen's film, Annie Hall (1977):

Online Resources

Here you can browse a range of resources, from articles about publishing to podcasts and industry reports.

Articles about publishing, bookselling and reading

Here are selected articles about publishing and reading, which you can freely access online. At the end of each chapter of the book, there are suggestions for further reading including books and articles

Tahmima Anam, 'Thank you Mum and Dad', Guardian, 9 October 2008

A humorous take on the benefits of being an author

Chris Anderson, 'The Long Tail', Wired, 12.10, October 2004

The original article about the Long Tail

Ken Auletta, 'Publish or Perish: Can the iPad topple the Kindle, and save the book business?', New Yorker, 26 April 2010

The battle to control the growing market for ebooks

Stephen Bayley, 'Beautiful, perfect, supreme chunk of paper', BBC, 17 September 2008

Article about the ebook v the printed book - with a video in which Peter Crawshaw tries out the Sony Reader

Nicholas Carr, 'Is Google making us Stupid?', Atlantic Monthly, July/August 2008.

What the internet is doing to our brains

Alex Clark, 'The Corrections', Guardian 12 February 2011

The role of the editor in modern publishing

Caleb Crain, 'Twilight of the Books', New Yorker, 24 December 2007.

What will life be like if people stop reading?

Caron Dann, 'Why is a bestseller worthless?', Times Higher Education, 20 November 2008.

The differing value to academia of research monographs and more commercial books.

Robert Darnton, 'Google and the Future of Books', New York Review of Books, 12 February 2009

Is too much power being concentrated in the hands of one company, Google?

Jason Epstein, 'Books @ Google', New York Review of Books, 19 October 2006

About Google Book Search

Joseph J. Esposito, 'The Wisdom of Oz: The role of the university press in scholarly communications', Journal of Electronic Publishing, Winter 2007

How to strengthen the university press

Matthew Evans, 'Guru-in-Chief', Guardian, 6 June 2009

The former Faber Chairman writes about T. S. Eliot and the poet's career at Faber

Stuart Jeffries, 'How Waterstone's killed bookselling', Guardian, 10 November 2009

Has Waterstone's killed bookselling?

John Lanchester, 'Short Cuts', London Review of Books, 19 June 2008

The merits of hardback v paperback

Martin Majoor, 'My Type Design Philosophy', Typotheque

Majoor on type design. He designed Scala, the face used in Inside Book Publishing

Blake Morrison, 'Black Day for the Blue Pencil', Observer, 6 August 2005

Editors are now an endangered species

Tim O'Reilly, 'What is Web 2.0', 30 September 2005

An attempt to clarify just what is meant by Web 2.0

George Packer, New Yorker, 17 February 2014

Amazon is good for customers. But is it good for books?

Colin Robinson, Diary in London Review of Books, 26 February 2009

Reflections on publishing both sides of the Atlantic

John Sutherland, 'Brave New World', Financial Times, 9 October 2004

Survey of the world of books

Peter Wilby, 'Final Chapter for book reviews?', Guardian, 15 December 2008

About the decline of the literary pages in newspapers

Carl Wilkinson, 'The Economics of Book Festivals', Financial Times, 30 May 2014

Author websites

These are some interesting examples of author websites:

www.fanfiction.net Thousands of examples of fan fiction, from Harry Potter to The Lord of the Rings

http://freakonomics.com/blog/ An example of an author's blog - for Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

www.jeanettewinterson.com Includes a Flash movie profiling her books

www.youwriteon.com A peer review site sponsored by the Arts Council

Databases and websites for research into publishing

The following databases and websites are great for research. Some are only available on subcription or through your library or business.

Amazon

book2book

The Bookseller

The Booksellers Association

Creative Commons - the most commonly used open content licensing system

Fame - database of financial information on companies in the UK and Ireland

Google Book Search

GPI Country Reports - Global Publishing Information reports - market data on countries. Available to members of the Publishers Association

Index Translationum - searchable UNESCO database of translations with lists of top authors, countries, and languages

Mintel - market research reports on UK bookselling and publishing

Nielsen BookData - bibliographic data

Nielsen BookScan - sales data for the consumer market

Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies - listen to podcasts from academics and industry professionals

Pirabase - information service covering packaging and print supply

The Publishers Association - Market Information and Statistics

Trailblazing - online archive of journal articles published by the Royal Society between 1665 and 2010

Publishing blogs

Here is a selection of blogs relevant to book publishing, bookselling and authorship

FutureBook

Guardian

Mostly books - the pleasures (and perils) of running an independent bookshop

New Yorker

Publishing Talk

Storythings A company dedicated to exploring new ways of telling stories

Publishing industry reports

The following publishing industry reports are useful for research. See also the section on databases and websites

Bain and Company, Publishing in the Digital Era, 2011

Geoffrey Crossick, Monographs and Open Access, 2014

LISU, Annual Library Statistics

O'Reilly, Start with XML: Why and how

PA Statistics Yearbook - available from the Publishers Association

Publishing Skills Council, Sector Profile, August 2008 - available to download

Mark Ware and Michael Mabe, The STM Report - available to download

Rudiger Wischenbart, Global eBook Report - available to download

Publishing journals

The following is a selection of publishing journals and periodicals:

The Author

The journal of the Society of Authors.

The Bookseller

Originally self-styled as the 'Organ of the Book Trade'; this is the leading trade magazine about book publishing and bookselling.

Covers information and content management.

International Journal of the Book

Journal linked to the annual International Conference on the Book.

Journal of Electronic Publishing

Published by the University of Michigan.

The Journal of Publishing Culture

Articles written and produced by postgraduate students at the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies

Journal of Scholarly Publishing

Published by the University of Toronto Press.

Learned Publishing

Journal of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers.

Logos

A mixture of peer-reviewed articles and pieces by industry practitioners.

Publishers Weekly

Weekly news magazine focused on the international book publishing business.

Publishing Research Quarterly

Journal which includes analysis and original research.

Publishing podcasts

Listen to a range of speakers at the website for the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies