- Advance Review Copy (ARC) — A sample book produced early enough that you can send it out for reviews in advance of publication. (They’re also sometimes called “Advance Reader Copies” or — and this drives me nuts — “Advanced Reader Copies,” as though they are written especially for advanced readers.)
- Amazon.com — Widely known for engaging in practices that make it difficult for independent bookstores — and even publishing companies — to stay in business. While we love to hate the behemoth for this behavior, it remains the single most important channel for selling books, and I’d be remiss not to mention it.
- Benefit statement — A sentence explaining how reading your book will benefit the reader. Fiction might be entertaining or inspiring; nonfiction might help the reader be informed by an expert (you) on a particular topic so they can (insert benefit here) lose weight, get a date, make money, etc.
- Blurb — A short comment or excerpt from a review that you can use to promote your book. (Disambiguation: Blurb is also the name of a print-on-demand provider.)
- Call to action — A request for your (website) reader to do something, like “Click here to buy my book.”
- Collateral materials — printed materials that support your marketing effort, such as posters, postcards, flyers, and bookmarks.
- EPUB (or ePub, short for “electronic publication”) is a free and open e-book standard by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). Files have the extension .epub. (Also see mobi.)
- Indie author — An author who self-publishes or works with a small, independent publisher. (“Indie” is short for “independent.”)
- Indie publisher — A small publisher (sometimes an individual) who is not affiliated with a large publishing house.
- Mailing list management system — Software that lets you consolidate and manage your mailing list, send emails to your subscribers, and analyze the results of your communications.
- Meet-and-greet — An author event at which the author does not read from her book, but simply meets and greets members of the public and uses her wit, smile, and style in what seems to me a doomed attempt to sell her book.
- MOBI is the content format used by Amazon Kindle Readers. It may have a .mobi extension or it may have a .prc extension. (Also see ePub.)
- PDF (Portable Document Format) is a file format that has captured all the elements of a printed document as an electronic image that you can view, navigate, print, or forward to someone else. Printed books are typically created from a PDF file. Unlike epub and mobi files, PDFs are not reflowable.
- Print-on-demand (POD) — The ability to print an entire book “on demand” whenever you want to, in small quantities, at a reasonable price.
- Reflowable — A file format (such as epub or mobi) that is designed so the reader can optimize text for a particular display device by choosing type size and style, line spacing, margins, and other visual effects.
- Self-published — A book that’s published by the author, rather than by a large or small publisher.
- Social media — websites and applications that allow people to create, share or exchange information, ideas, and pictures/videos in virtual communities and networks.
Bonus glossary: Hubspot provides 117 definitions (including ones for words you’ve probably never heard of) on