Publishing Terms and Jargon Every Author Should Know
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The book industry is full of publishing terms and jargon that most authors have never heard before. What's a preempt? What's a blurb, and how is it different from a synopsis or those quotes that you see on the back cover of a book?
If you don't know what those or other publishing terms mean, don't worry, because today I'm breaking down all the essential industry lingo that you need to know as an author. Hopefully, this will help you better understand how the industry works and navigate the publishing process, particularly if you are interested in traditional publishing.
Querying Jargon
First, let's dive into the querying terms that you should know:
Query letter: This is the document that you send to literary agents telling them about your book and about you as an author. It is essentially your means of pitching your manuscript to them if you are interested in pursuing traditional publishing. Submitting your query letter to literary agents is the first step in that process after you have finished your manuscript.
Blurb: You might see this term used in different ways throughout the industry. Here's how I like to define it: the blurb is the brief description of your book that you include in your query letter, and in fact, it makes up the majority of your query letter. This is essentially operating as a movie trailer for your book, where you're teasing what the story is all about, the stakes, and the characters and the conflict. The goal here is to entice the agent to want to read more of your story and dive into your sample pages that you also submit to them.
Confusingly, blurbs are also used to refer to quotes from other authors that go on the online description page of a published book or on the cover in some capacity. So, if you see something like "Amazing and suspenseful. –Dan Brown" on the cover of a book by a different author, that is also considered a blurb.
Synopsis: Many authors confuse the blurb and the synopsis, but they are very different. The synopsis is a separate document outside of your query letter that basically is a SparkNotes summary of your book. It tells us the beginning, middle, and the end including all spoilers.
Comparable (comp) titles: These are recently published books that are similar to your book in some way, and including comps in your query letter helps the agent picture your book in the market and understand similar audiences that you are targeting. It gives the agent a sense of where this book could be shelved.
MS or MSS: This is the abbreviation for manuscript (MS) or manuscripts (MSS), plural. This is the draft of the book that you are submitting to literary agents and then that literary agents are submitting to editors at publishing houses.
Partial request: If a literary agent reads your query letter and is interested in reading more of your book, they may request a partial manuscript. This could be anywhere from the first 10 pages to the first 100 pages or anything in between.
Full request: This is when an agent requests to see the entire manuscript after reading your query letter.
Slush pile: This refers to an agent's query inbox, whether that's a specific email where all of their queries go to or their database where they go through all of their queries. Typically, when you query an agent, it would go into the "slush pile", though it has a negative connotation that I personally don't believe in. Many authors do get their agents through submitting and going into this “slush pile,” and it is the standard process.
Book Deal Jargon
Now that we know all of these querying terms, let's talk about publishing terms used in book deals specifically:
On submission: Once you have a literary agent and your agent is submitting your manuscript to publishers, you are on submission.
Acquisition: This is the act of the publisher purchasing the rights to publish your book. Editors at publishing houses who make book deals with literary agents are typically called acquisitions editors or acquiring editors, though we often just call them editors. At publishing houses, they hold what we call acquisitions meetings, where the editors present the books that literary agents have submitted to them that they are interested in pursuing more.
Now, let's talk about different types of book deal negotiations:
Preempt: This is an offer made by an acquisition editor at a publishing house to a literary agent that intends to take the book off the table. They want to purchase this book for a set amount that they are offering to the agent, and if the agent and author accept, the manuscript will not go out to any other editor. This typically happens when an editor is very interested and passionate about acquiring the book.
Exclusive: This is if a literary agent exclusively submits the manuscript to one specific editor. That means no other editors are currently considering it, and they are going to wait to hear back from that editor before shopping the manuscript more widely.
Auction: This is if multiple editors express interest in making a book deal offer. The agent is going to collect all of their bids and determine which to move forward with.
Now, let's talk about some of the publishing terms specifically in a book deal contract:
Advance: This is the amount of money that the publisher is offering to pay you upfront as part of the book deal. The advance amount is retained by the author no matter how many copies of the book are sold, and it is typically delivered in a number of installments. First is on the signing of the contract, then it could be on the delivery and acceptance of the manuscript (which means when the editor has accepted it and is ready to move forward with it through the publishing process). Then, another fraction is typically delivered on publication date, and then sometimes a final fraction of the advance is given one year after the initial publication date or on the paperback publication date. The timing of when the advance is distributed is negotiated in your book deal contract.
The advance amount is an advance against royalties, meaning that before you see royalty checks come in for your book sales, the publisher has to earn back the amount they have already paid you in your advance. Which brings us to the next term:
Earn out: This is when an author has earned enough royalties that the publisher has made back the advance, and now that author will receive royalty checks going forward for the copies of books that are sold. That leads us into:
Royalties: This is a percentage of the price per book sold that is shared with the author. Once authors start earning royalties, they will be distributed at a set cadence.
Subsidiary rights: Also called sub rights, these are all the other types of rights beyond the initial publication rights that a publisher might buy as part of a book deal. This includes translation rights, movie or TV rights, audio rights, paperback rights, etc. Your agent might negotiate subsidiary rights as part of your primary publication contract, or they might sell subsidiary rights as part of secondary deals that they do with other publishers or other agencies.
Option clause: This is a clause in your publishing contract that allows your publisher the right of first refusal on your next book. So, this means that they will typically have an option to look at your material for your next book before it is shopped around to other publishers.
Publishing House Jargon
Let's talk about publishing house terminology:
Big Five: You are likely familiar with these: Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette, Simon and Schuster, and Macmillan. These are the major trade publishing houses that dominate the publishing market in the United States.
Midsize publishers: These are traditional publishing houses, but they are smaller than the Big Five, and they operate independently of these large corporations.
Small/indie presses: These are also traditional publishers but even smaller than midsize publishers. Typically, they specialize in a specific genre or niche.
Imprint: All of the Big Five publishers and some of the midsize publishers have imprints. These are the divisions of the larger publishing house that specialize in a specific type of book or specific subset of genres. If you open the copyright page of any book on your shelf, you will see the imprint listed there. And when your literary agent is shopping your book to editors, they are negotiating with editors at specific imprints that would be a good match for your book.
List: This refers to an agent's list of clients or previously published books, or an acquiring editor's list of authors or previously published books.
Front-list: Front list refers to a recently published book, usually within the year.
Backlist: After a book has been out for over a year, it is considered a backlist title.
Midlist: Unlike front-list and backlist, this doesn't refer to the timing of a book's publication but rather gives you a sense of the number of sales of the book. Midlist books are expected to have more modest sales and not be huge bestsellers. It's not necessarily a bad thing. Most authors that publish through traditional publishers are midlist, and they could still have very solid sales.
Debut: This refers to an author who is publishing for the first time. A debut book is the author's first book.
Pub date: This is the abbreviated version of publication date, the date that the book goes on sale to consumers.
Did you learn at least one new publishing term today? I hope this list helps clear up any confusion around some of the common book publishing terms you’ll likely come across in your publishing journey.
Thanks so much for reading, and happy writing!