Abecedary (ay-bee-see-da-ree):

  • (a.) Pertaining to, or formed by, the letters of the alphabet; alphabetic; hence, rudimentary.
  • (n.) A primer; the first principle or rudiment of anything.
  • (n.) A new concept in publishing, using technology and business savvy to get authors results.

 

 

Are you stuck in the quicksand between writing a great book and seeing it in print? It's a nightmare, isn't it?

You slave away, putting all your passion into writing a great book, but then hit that dead end when you realize you have no idea how to get the thing actually published.

Let Abecedary help guide your work through the morass of publishing minutiae so you can focus on creating the content that matters to you.

Advance

a sum of money a traditional publisher pays an author, generally a bet on future sales. If you hear that J.K. Rowling received an advance of £1500 for the first Harry Potter book that was because the publisher, Bloomsbury, was betting it could recoup that advance based on sales of the book.

Binding

How a book is held together. Examples are coil, wire, perfect, saddlestitched, case bound and smythe-sewn.

Boutique Publishing

A form of "assisted" self-publishing, wherein the author picks and chooses what services s/he wants to handle and which services s/he'd like to arrange with the publisher. Payment in boutique publishing is typically divided between an upfront payment to the publisher along with the publisher receiving a "per-unit" margin, typically 2-5% of the book's selling cost. The author retains complete creative control but has access to a huge wealth of expertise and experience.

Case Bound

Hardcover book binding. The "case" is the cardboard cover itself, it is usually wrapped with a cloth-like material.

Digital Printing

A xerographic process whereby images are directly reproduced from digital source files onto paper. Because no plates are created, it is a cost-effective way to produce short runs of books.

Dingbats

Graphic objects used to mark section breaks or provide decorative ornamentation in laying out a page.

Distribution

How your book gets to bookstores. Usually handled by a third-party distributor, unless you're published by a large house with an internal distribution network. As book sales happen more and more on the internet rather than corner bookshops, the distributor is less needed. Distributors generally have marketing budget requirements, because if the publisher is not willing to put up the capital to market the book, the distributor is not going to be able to easily sell it to the bookstores.

E-Book

A book which is published, though not physically available. It may be downloaded, usually in PDF format, for free or for sale online.

Editing

Editing is an umbrella term for refining and clarifying ideas. Your book may need editing if you are using a highly complex language your readers may not understand. Or you might need an editor if you need help tightening or refining your sentence structure. An editor also keeps track of usage rules, and checks for consistency throughout the work. A good editor asks a lot of questions so s/he has a solid understanding of what the author intends to say.

Endsheets

In hardcover books, the colored or specialty paper that is glued on to the case and precedes the text block.

Font

Also called “typeface,” a complete set of alphabetical and numerical characters designed with stylistic unity. A font can be bold, italic, or other variant, while maintaining visual sameness.

Indexing

In a printed book, the index is generated through a careful reading, and references are made for ease of searching the book. The index is at the back of the book, and needs to be done manually, rather than automatically: an entry on "Shakespeare" would include referents in the text to "The Bard."

ISBN

International Standard Book Number. This number is composed of 13 digits which identify the publisher, the title and the price. This number is also reproduced in the barcode. Every book must be assigned a unique ISBN if it is to be sold through any outlet.

Jacket

The outer wrap of a book. It usually includes a summary of the book (the blurb) and may have quotes from famous readers that will entice average people to pick it up. Notable people who've provided Abecedary cover quotes include President Jimmy Carter, Ross Perot, Bill Gates, architect Jaquelin Robertson, and social theorist Richard Florida.

Layout

The process of arranging a manuscript on the page, including photograph and caption placement, font selection, illustration placement and selection and placement of non-illustrative graphic elements, such as dingbats and page numbers.

Manuscript

A non-formatted document that has not yet been published, but is substantively ready for publishing.

Offset Printing

A traditional printing method whereby "snapshots" of each page are taken, then transferred to metal plates. The ink is rolled onto the plates, then transferred to the paper. Offset printing produces high image quality, but is generally cost-prohibitive for runs of fewer than 1000 copies. Because of the high cost of producing plates, offset printing is generally used for high-volume, one-time print runs. If a printer has a mechanism to store the plates for future use, then additional print runs are significantly less expensive.

PCN / LCCN

Library of Congress Preassigned Control Number or Library of Congress Card Number. A book which has not yet been printed is assigned a PCN rather than an LCCN when the Library of Congress intends to add it to their collection. If a book has not been assigned a PCN, then it may not be added to the Library of Congress. If it is later added to the Library, it will be assigned a LCCN which is to be included in any future editions of a book.

Perfect Binding

A form of binding used primarily for high-quality paperback book binding. The text block is glued in a straight line to the cover. The cover is usually a heavier paper stock, and sometimes can wrap like a jacket.

Photo optimization

Digitally correcting photographs for highest quality output – can involve retouching, color balance correction, color separation and saturation checks.

Prepress

The process of getting a manuscript ready to send to the printer, including typesetting, layout, proofreading, and photo optimization and captioning (if applicable).

Proofreading

A proofreader checks for grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors. Proofreading typically occurs twice in the publishing process: once after the manuscript is completed, and once after the book is typeset. That ensures that in typesetting, all font styles are appropriate (i.e., italicizing a newspaper name) and nothing has changed inadvertently in the layout phase.

Publishing

The activity of making information available for public viewing. Traditionally, a publisher coordinates getting a book to market.

Rights Management

The process of securing copyright permission for reprinting works, usually photographs and song lyrics. A publisher of a book needs to maintain a file of the reprint permission rights, in case there is ever a legal challenge to the reprint. Generally reprint rights are negotiated for a certain number of copies; this can create a challenge when the book is being printed on demand or as needed.

Royalties

Essentially, the licensing fee a traditional publisher will pay the author of a work for the right to reprint it. For every book sold, the publisher will take the price paid by the reseller, then subtract the cost to get the book in print (marketing fees, printing costs, design fees, returns, etc.) and what is left is the royalty. Here's an example: A book retails for $24.95 at your local big-box-bookstore. That local big-box will have a required discount that they pay, usually 55%. So the publisher is being paid $11.22 per book. From that $11.22, let's estimate that printing costs were $6.50, and the other costs the publisher incurred were $3.00. The author's agent would then take their fee, let's say, 50 cents per book. So the author's royalty would be $1.22 per book sold! If the author has received an advance against the royalties, then that advance of $5000 would mean that the first additional royalties the author would receive would be after selling their first four thousand books.

Run

The number of copies of a book that are printed and bound.

Self-Publishing

When an author takes on the responsibility of getting his or her writing to the public market. The author takes on the liabilities of managing fulfillment, distribution, marketing, rights management and editing. S/he will also be the book's designer, editor and proofreader. An author who self-publishes takes on all the costs and all the revenues of the book.

Signatures

In hardcover bookbinding, printing is done so that one sheet may be folded a number of times (typically three times, making eight pages). It is then trimmed so that the pages can be turned.

Smyth-Sewn

(also Smythe-sewn) a form of bookbinding in which the signatures are sewn together into a book block, then glued into the cover case.

Spine

Where the cover of the book meets the text block.

Text block

(also called "book block") these are the actual pages of the book, not including endsheets.

Traditional-Publishing

A method of publishing wherein a large company purchases the rights to a manuscript for a set amount, usually an advance against royalties. The publisher then incurs all expenses related to the book's production and distribution. The author usually retains little to no creative control over the ultimate look and feel of the book.

Trim-size

The final measurement of the finished text block. The trim size of a typical spiral notebook, for example, is 8.5 x 11, even though if you actually measure it with a ruler, it is slightly wider because of the spiral wire binding.

Typesetting

The process of laying out the whole of a manuscript into a format that will be reproduced by the printer. Typesetting includes setting hyphenation standards, rules about spacing, caption placement and registration, and implementing standards of justification and indents.

Wholesale Fulfillment House

If a book is listed in the wholesale fulfillment house's catalogue, then it may be ordered by bookstores and libraries. There are three major fulfillment houses, stocking all the bookstores nationwide. To be listed in their catalogue as available, the book's publisher must be a registered vendor. Self-published authors are rarely eligible to participate in the fulfillment houses' programs.