Today, everyone is a writer, wants to be one, or is doing a phenomenal job pretending to be one at a lit fest near you. For instance, when my first book came out a few years ago, I was the only writer in my neighbourhood. Today, my wife, her octogenarian great aunt who lives next door and our watchman Selvamani have books out.
And unlike me, they’ve all gone into reprint. In fact, Selvamani (now going by the moniker Salve A. Money) is off to London to talk to his agent and hasn’t noticed that I’ve slipped my book into his dust jacket because he’s getting a foot massage from the great aunt. So – doesn’t it make sense you keep abreast with key publishing terms? Who can tell? Tomorrow, it may be your turn.
Acknowledgments
Section of a book that usually comes at its end where you praise all the people you want to beat to a coma with the hardcover edition.
Blurb
Short description of your book that appears on the back cover. The word is a corruption of “burble”, which is what your stomach does when it produces gas.
Copy edit
Editing that concentrates on the mechanics of your writing. Meaning, if your book is the works, copy editing is the spanner. If your book is the wheel, it is the spoke. Typically, copy editors, while doing their principal job of updating their FB status, take a high-speed look at grammar, punctuation and spelling errors and add some if there aren’t enough in your original manuscript to give it that much-needed edge
Editor
Comes from the word “deter”. In the old days, writers were known to quaff ale in pubs and yell “Aaargh! ’e deter me writing, that knave, Begorrah!” It later became e’deter and now has been standardised to editor.
Foreword
Introduction to your book written by a well-known and highly respected person whom you have incriminating evidence against in the form of high-res pix or text messages.
Genre
Word no writer has as yet figured how to pronounce, but insists on using with impunity at lit fests. It means classification of books. Examples of genre in fiction are mystery, romance, historical romance, mysterious romance, hysterical mystery, mystical hysteria, morontic history, crime fiction, criminal fiction, literary fiction, literally fiction and illiterate fiction (most popular in India).
Hook
Used to mean that special something that makes your book stand out from every other title on the bookshelf. Also, the implement you use to catch your editor when she is running away from you at a lit fest. Usually followed by line and sinker.
Literary agent
Exactly like an insurance agent; collects a percentage of your royalty much like a yearly premium for as long as you live. When you die, makes sure your spouse gets your unsold stock as lump sum payment.
Literary fiction
Fiction that appeals to a more intellectually minded audience which wears glasses and is prone to irregular bowel movement. This type of book must, at any cost, talk lyrically about loss and redemption. Literary fiction also tends to have a stronger focus on atmosphere, weather conditions, suspended particulate matter, direction of the wind, dung quotient of soil and long passages dedicated to whether a cloud is cumulonimbus or stratocumulus. The plot, if any, usually deals with incest or mental illness or both.
Marketing
Effort the publishing house puts in to make sure your books reach as many readers as possible. Santa Claus heads this department and is assisted by the tooth fairy. The elves pitch in when they are short staffed.
Non-fiction
Writing based on facts the writer has imagined while under the influence of hallucinogens. Also, if you are fiction writer, non-fiction sells better, and vice versa.
Option
Also called the right of first refusal. It means the publisher’s right to refuse to answer your phone calls or respond to your mails.
Proofs
Just before a book goes to press, the author gets a copy of the typeset pages to have one last chance to check for typos or make minor revisions. These are called proofs because, quite often, after scouring bookshops to find a copy of your book till your knees need to be replaced, this may be the only proof you have that your book was ever published.
Query
Covering letter sent to agents or editors. To be effective, a query should have the author’s personal information like name, address, phone, email, FB page, Twitter handle, blood pressure, cholesterol, criminal record, influential people s/he knows who have access to firearms as well as the title of the book, genre and a short, cleverly disguised threat pretending to be the blurb of the book. If the author is a beautiful woman, she should attach a photograph. If the author is a repulsive, morbidly obese man, he must attach a photograph of a beautiful woman.
Royalty
Percentage of sales author receives for each copy of the book sold. Called royalty for the same reason kings/queens are called that, i.e., rarely seen.
Spine
What a book has but its author mustn’t.
Typo
Typographical error that usually appears on the first page of a book, making the author immune to all errors that follow.
Verso
Left-hand page of the statement you get from accounts which tells you your book sales have gone from bad to verso.
Wf
While correcting proofs, this abbreviation indicates the wrong font has been used. As opposed to wtf, used for most other things.
After two novels, Iceboys in Bell-Bottoms and Jump Cut, and a play, Dear Anita, finding himself exactly where he began – nowhere – Krishna Shastri Devulapalli is currently working on being a lexicographer.
