The product, the GoodReads statistic, the vehicle of author-words to reader-eyes: the book (or article). Reading, writing, and obsessing over that old-book smell has led many a poor soul to publishing. I'm willing to bet you're on this website because either A) you are a StoryGraph or GoodReads goal-buster, B) you never leave the house without your comfort book that you'll definitely read on the subway or bus, C) you have strong opinions on the paperback v. hardcover debate, or D) you've started stacking books on your floor.
Assert your bibliophile dominance by learning all the niche terms we use to describe books and the materials and processes surrounding them!
Types of Books - Some different terms we use for a collection of bound pages.
Advance reading copy (ARC) - A copy of the book made available before its official publication date, often for the purposes of hyping up the book before its release date. Good reviews sell books. Shiny blurbs are the jewels of the back cover.
Chapbook - Most often refers to “poetry chapbooks,” which are short, and sometimes handmade, collections of poetry focused on a central theme. Originally (that is, around the start of the 16th century), chapbooks were a cheap way to distribute “light literature” like ballads, “dream lore,” and (the lightest of all) notorious crimes (see Britannica linked below).
Copy - Any material that will be printed, most commonly in a newspaper/magazine context, and usually in the context of editing it. E.g., if you sent a 14-page paper about the dialectic relationship between Snoop Dogg and Snoopy to a freelance editor at a journal about Hip Hop and Cartoons, the 14-page paper is the “copy.” As in, “Did you receive the copy I sent you?” and “Hey, checking in on this again—did you get the copy?” and “Please respond to me, I need to know; did you receive the copy I sent you yesterday?” Not the same as “copies” that come out of a printer.
Critical Edition - A single version of a text constructed with “all the available evidence,” supplemented with extensive editorial and critical notes.
Types of Editions | Harvard's Geoffrey Chaucer Website - see for quote
Hardcover - A book with a hard cover (wow!), usually cardboard, more expensive than other variants. Often you’ll see a hardcover/hardback book released first, followed by its softcover variant, then maybe a mass market paperback release.
Manuscript - Originally meant “a text written by hand,” although now it usually means an unpublished document intended for publication. You’ll still hear manuscript in the original sense of the term when reading historical research.
Mass market paperback - The darlings of genre-readers, mass market paperbacks (MMPBs) are small (usually 4”x7”) books with teeny font (like pt. 10 or smaller) printed on low-quality paper. You seem them on those spinny things at the front of tourist-trap stores at your local airport, or tucked into the forgotten, half-broken shelf at a thrift store. Supposedly pocket-sized, even though it seems like 90% of the books published as MMPBs were originally 500-pages long, and now at 1,000 pages, they would only fit into the pocket of a giant. Still cheap, though.
Monograph - An academic book that delves into a particular area of research, which is typically purchased by libraries and constitutes a significant amount of a university press’s income.
Softcover/paperback - A version of a book that is cheaper to produce and often comes after the hardcover, with a flexible cover and usually no dust jacket. In my experience, “paperback” and “softcover” are synonymous terms, but one source claimed that “softcover” referred to higher-quality paperbacks.
Paperback vs Softcover | American Print & Bindery - see for softcover as higher quality paperback.
Zine - A short, small-batch, and independently produced and published pamphlet-like thing. Usually doesn’t make a profit.
Anatomy of a book - These terms will help you talk with clarity and good cheer about the physical aestheticization of books when inevitably someone mentions publishing's increasing focus on a book's appearance, driven by the predominantly visual behemoth that is BookTok!! HOORAY!
Cover - The front of the book. Yes, people judge books by their covers.
Dust jacket/wrapper - Sometimes also just called a “jacket," the paper wrap around a hardcover's paperboard binding.
Spine - The bound edge of the book, usually including the title, author name, colophon, and a continuation of the cover art if it’s especially fancy.
Colophon - A publisher’s or imprint’s logo, like Graywolf’s stylized wolf face, or Penguin Random House’s penguin, usually located on the spine of a book and on the title page.
Blurb - The paragraph that summarizes the book, usually on the back cover.
Testimonial - A review from another author or a magazine to tantalize the reader into buying the book, usually on the back of the book, but short pull quotes might be integrated into the cover design.
Deckle edges - Also called “feathered” edges, where the outward-facing edges of the pages (opposite from the spine) are rough or unevenly cut.
Gilt edges - Outward-facing edges of pages (usually all edges) are covered in thin gold-leaf.
Sprayed edges - Outward-facing edges of pages (usually all edges, but sometimes just opposite from the spine) are colored or otherwise decorated. Thanks, Fourth Wing! Sometimes, “sprayed edges” is taken to mean just a block color, while “stenciled edges” refer to more intricate designs.
Stenciled edges - Outward-facing edges of pages (usually all edges, but sometimes just opposite from the spine) are intricately decorated. Thanks, Fourth Wing! “Stenciled edges” as a term has mostly fallen out of favor, with “sprayed edges” being much more popular. However, sometimes, “sprayed edges” is taken to mean just a block color, while “stenciled edges” refer to more intricate designs.
Flyleaf - The blank pages at the beginning or end of a book.
Leaf - The term to refer to a page of a book. “Turn over a new leaf.”
Typography - The arrangement of type on a page.
Title page - A page before the start of text including the book’s title, the author's name, the publisher and city of publication, and the date of publication. May also include the colophon and information about editors and illustrators.
Abstract - The summary of an academic article included before the article.
Margin - The edges of text on the page.
Ragged margin - When the text is left-aligned, rather than justified, resulting in an uneven right-hand margin.
Recto and verso - Often used in textual and bibliographic studies, describes the sides of a page. Recto means the front of the page, while verso means the back. When you open a book, the recto page will be on the right, while the verso is on the left.
Signature - A large sheet of paper folded into several pages for a book and sewn into the spine of a book. Signatures usually fold into at least four pages and no more than 64 pages.
Gutter - When you open a book, you’ll find that there is a blank space on both pages where the page is sewn into the spine. This is to make sure that the text isn’t obscured by sewing the pages too tightly in.
Bibliography - Not a synonym for works cited, although they’re often used interchangeably. A bibliography is merely a list of books related to one another. A bibliography may be the list of citations (but only if those citations are books) at the end of an essay, but a TOP 10 ROMANTASY RELEASES FOR FEBRUARY list is also a bibliography.
Editorial & proofreading terms - A little sneak peek into publishing's equivalents of "OOO" and "EOD."
Addendum - Something added to a book or other document after publication. This also refers to a legal tool called “the author’s addendum” that empowers an academic author to modify “copyright transfer agreements with non-open access journal publishers,” which will allow the author to reproduce their work elsewhere.
Copy - Any material that will be printed, most commonly in a newspaper/magazine context, and usually in the context of editing it. E.g., if you sent a 14-page paper about the dialectic relationship between Snoop Dogg and Snoopy to a freelance editor at a journal about Hip Hop and Cartoons, the 14-page paper is the “copy.” As in, “Did you receive the copy I sent you?” and “Hey, checking in on this again—did you get the copy?” and “Please respond to me, I need to know; did you receive the copy I sent you yesterday?” Not the same as “copies” that come out of a printer.
Corrigendum/erratum - Correction to a published text, usually attended by a list of the corrections made.
DEL - Shorthand for “delete,” usually too short or prescriptive to use in author-editor communication.
Em dash (—) - A dash the width of the m in a typescript, used to interrupt a sentence, a little stronger than a comma. E.g., “An em dash—and other punctuation marks—may be used to set off a clause in a sentence for emphasis or readability.” While each press has its own style, em dashes usually do not have spaces on either side.
En dash (–) - A dash the width of the n in a typescript, used in certain style guides for numerical ranges, and not at all otherwise. E.g., “see pages 78–79 for information on the criminally underappreciated en dash.”
Galleys/galley proofs - The typeset copy of a piece read over before the official print-run. At this stage, editors will start “proofreading,” or scanning the text for egregious errors, like mispellings or missed punctuation, and for errors introduced in the typesetting phase, like laddering, widows, orphans, rivers, or runts.
Gutter - When you open a book, you’ll find that there is a blank space on both pages where the page is sewn into the spine. This is to make sure that the text isn’t obscured by sewing the pages too tightly in.
Kerning - Manually adjusting the spacing between individual characters.
Laddering - Describes an abundance of punctuation on the right-hand margin, which can look aesthetically unpleasing (*cough cough* ugly).
Orphan - The opposite of a widow; “when the first line of a paragraph sits at the bottom of a page by itself.”
Ragged margin - When the text is left-aligned, rather than justified, resulting in an uneven right-hand margin.
Recto and verso - Often used in textual and bibliographic studies, describes the sides of a page. Recto means the front of the page, while verso means the back. When you open a book, the recto page will be on the right, while the verso is on the left.
Rivers - Imagine a long paragraph of text, where spaces happen to line up across the lines of the text, creating a “river” of blank space throughout the text. Visually distracting for a reader.
Runt - When the last line of a paragraph ends on a single line, an awkward typographical event regarded as an error.
Stet - Literally means “let it stand,” an editorial note meaning that a previous edit should be ignored or reversed.
Style sheet/guide - The list of stylistic choices a journal or publishing house has made to maintain consistency across articles/books. For example, a style sheet will include guidance on whether the Oxford comma is to be retained, which words should be “closed” (for example, “birth mother” or “birthmother”?), whether dialogue takes single or double quotes, etc.
TK - Meaning “to come,” indicating portions in a draft where the author plans on adding more material. “TK” rather than “TC” because plenty of words have “tc” in them (waTCh, twiTCh, eTCh), and “TK” is more rare (laTKes, though?). CTRL+Fing “TK” is thus more efficient.
Tracking - Adjusting the spacing between all characters in a portion of text (a word, a paragraph, pages, etc.) in equal increments.
Typesetting - Arranging text on a page, now done through layout software like InDesign.
Widow - The opposite of an orphan; when the last line or two of a paragraph runs over to the next page, an awkward typographical event regarded as an error.
Around the Book - Because the book itself was, apparently, not enough.
Addendum - Something added to a book or other document after publication. This also refers to a legal tool called “the author’s addendum” that empowers an academic author to modify “copyright transfer agreements with non-open access journal publishers,” which will allow the author to reproduce their work elsewhere.
Advance - An amount of money a publisher gives to an author in exchange for the rights to publish their book.
Bibliography - Not a synonym for works cited, although they’re often used interchangeably. A bibliography is merely a list of books related to one another. A bibliography may be the list of citations (but only if those citations are books) at the end of an essay, but a TOP 10 ROMANTASY RELEASES FOR FEBRUARY list is also a bibliography.
Boilerplate - Reusable content that can simply be pasted into a piece of writing. Think author bio or company mission statement.
Collation - A description of the physical attributes of a book.
Ephemera - Most popularly used in archival research. Materials designed not to last.
Juvenilia - Work produced by an author when they were young; Jane Austen’s juvenilia is one of the better-known examples here.
Prospectus/pitch - An explanation of a book or idea sent to a publisher to be picked up; in my experience, prospectuses tend to be longer and about work that is already in progress, while pitches are shorter and about works that haven’t yet been started.
Royalties - The payment an author receives for each book sold after enough royalties have "paid off" the advance.
Slush pile - The accumulation of unagented submissions to a press; usually combed over by an intern or a volunteer reader, if they are read at all. Increasingly, publishing house only consider agented manuscripts.