Glossary A-G 

Welcome to my world—a world with a language all its own! I've taken the liberty of adding a glossary of commonly used promotional copywriting and publishing terms to better serve your understanding of these industries and to help us communicate effectively. Caution: Best read in small doses!

ABOVE-THE-LINE ADVERTISING Pure media advertising (press, radio or television) where the agency makes its money in the form of commission from the publisher, rather than a direct charge to the client.

ACQUISITION COST The cost associated with generating a new customer.

ACQUISITION EDITOR The person at a publishing company in charge of reviewing and rating incoming manuscripts for possible publication and then supervise the publication process.

ACTION DEVICES Copy planted throughout a direct-mail package that urges the reader to respond immediately, usually by calling a toll-free number or completing and returning a response device
(order form).

ADVANCE A sum paid to the author in anticipation of royalty earnings.

ADVERTORIAL A paid advertisement designed to give the impression of being an editorial rather than advertising.

APPENDIX Supplementary materials printed at the end of the general text.

ATTRIBUTES The stylistic properties of an object. Attributes of text include size, case, and boldness. Attributes of graphics include line thickness, fill color and line color. A set of attributes applied to an object is called a style.

ATTRITION A reduction in response to a promotion or mail list due to repeated use.

AUDIENCE The group most likely to be interested in the subject matter of the book.

AWARENESS A goal of brand advertising, as brand advertising doesn’t solicit immediate, direct sales, but aims to form favorable impressions that will motivate the consumer to seek out and buy the advertiser’s product or service.

B2B Business-to-business advertising.

B2C Business-to-consumer advertising.

BACK-END The sale of additional products after a new customer has made his first purchase.

BACK MATTER The section after the body of the text and may include the endnotes, index, bibliography, author biography, etc.

BANGTAIL ENVELOPE An envelope with an extended flap or extra flap containing the response device.

BAR CODE A system of stripes and bars printed on the back cover of a book. Used universally in the book industry for automated ordering and inventory systems.

BELOW-THE-LINE ADVERTISING
 Promotional material that does not employ pure advertising media, such as brochures, direct mail, etc.

BENEFITS What your product or service actually does for your customer. Benefits are the crucial “what’s-in-it-for-them” that must form the core of your marketing message.

BILL ENCLOSURE Promotional material enclosed with a bill, invoice or a statement.

BINDING The process of affixing pages together in a single bound book.

BLIND ENVELOPE A way to disguise direct mail as ordinary correspondence to increase the likelihood that it will be opened.

BLUELINE The proof sheets of a book revealed in bluish ink that shows exactly how the pages or cover of a book will look when it
is printed.

BLURB Abbreviated, positive review of the book or the author often appearing on the back cover or in front matter.

BINGO CARD Reply card inserted in a publication. Used by readers
to request literature from companies whose products and services are either advertised or mentioned in editorial columns.

BLEED Refers to printing that goes beyond the edge of the sheet after trimming.

BLOG A web site, where you write on an ongoing basis. The writing is often posted in reverse chronological order, so that the newest writing appears at the top of the page.

BODY COPY The text of a given piece of copy, as opposed to other written elements such as headlines, subheads, captions, etc.

BOOKS IN PRINT A database managed by R. R. Bowker of books in or about to print based on the ISBN numbers issued by them to the publishers.

BOUNCE BACK A flyer or other promotional material designed for insertion into a package in which products are delivered.

BRAND The sum of the ideas, feelings, thoughts, and experiences of and/or about a company or organization seared into the consumer’s brain.

BRANDING The art/science/black magic of making a brand. Do not confuse the creation of a logo, which is the graphic representation of the symbol of the brand, with branding, which encompasses an enormous range of messages and experiences.

BRC (Business reply card) A pre-paid and preaddressed postcard the prospect returns in response to a direct-mail campaign.

BRE (Business reply envelope) Like the BRC, it’s prepaid and preaddressed. Although it’s more expensive to produce and fulfill, the BRE ensures greater privacy (for things such as credit card numbers) and can support a larger, more complicated response form.

BREAK-EVEN The amount of revenue a promotion must generate in order to offset marketing costs. In some cases, direct marketers may also include fulfillment costs in the break-even calculation.

BRIEF A written or oral expression of the sales-features and marketing strategy behind a client's services or products.

BROCHURE A printed, folded leaflet containing advertising or a promotional message.

BULLET A graphic symbol usually in the form of a large dot that denotes a list of related ideas or concepts; used to attract the
reader's attention.

BURST A graphic device often used next to photographs of products or premiums, containing value or offer statements: “A $39 Value, FREE!”

BYLINE The name of the author of a given piece, indicating credit for having written a book or article. Ghostwriters do not receive bylines.

CALL OUT A brief selection of copy that is deliberately designed, often within a box or different type font, to stand apart from the main body of text and draw attention to a special point or an important feature.

CALL TO ACTION The written equivalent of the sales close, the call to action incites the prospect to take a specific action in exchange for a specific offer.

CAMERA READY Final high-resolution artwork, including text and graphics, ready for reproduction in the final book production and/or printing process.

CAPTION Text placed beneath an image or illustration to describe it.

CIP (Cataloging-in-Publication) The bibliographic information supplied by the Library of Congress and printed on the copyright/verso page.

CLIP ART Generic graphics that can be “clipped out” and used for illustrations.

CMYK Four-color printing process using the major colors cyan, magenta, yellow and black to produce pictures in a range of colors.

COLLATERAL Printed marketing material such as brochures, pamphlets, white sheets, et al.

COMMUNICATIONS CHANNEL The path or route a message follows to reach an audience. Often refers to the medium or mechanism used.

COMP A visual mockup of a set of concepts or work in progress used to either sell or present ideas to the client.

CONCEPT The “big idea” behind a given marketing element, campaign or publishing project.

CONTENT EDIT An edit of a book that checks the flow of the text, its organization, continuity and content.

CONTROL This is the direct mail, space ad or Internet promotion performing best for a company right now. It’s the benchmark against which variables and new promotions are tested against to measure response rates, average sale or return on investment. When a new promotion performs better than the control that promotion becomes the new control.

COPY The written word. All the writing found in ads, books, direct mail, brochures, Web sites and other marketing materials.

COPY BRIEF The document that paints the target the copywriter must hit. Good briefs define the objectives, articulate the strategy, illustrate the target audience, outline a number of “points” the writer must include, and lists items of evidence the writer can use to make a persuasive case.

COPY EDIT An edit that checks for grammar, spelling, punctuation and other typographical errors.

COPYRIGHT Legal protection given to intellectual rights such written and published works in a variety of forms such as books, audio and software. The © symbol denotes copyright.

COPYWRITING The art, science and craft
of writing promotional copy. Not to be confused with “copyrighting,” which concerns the legal rights and obligations
of intellectual property.

COSMETIC VIOLATOR A graphic element, such as a starburst or button, that deliber- ately “violates” the design harmony of a promotional piece in order to draw attention to its message.

COVER ART The design of the book jacket or front of a collateral piece.

CROP To cut the edges of an image or illustration to fit in a given space or to show a particular detail.

CROSS-SELLING Selling a promotion across the board to demographics outside the lists within the house.

DELIVERABLE The physical product of
a marketing/advertising campaign or
project, such as an ad, a press release,
or a Web site.

DEMOGRAPHIC The characteristics of human populations and population segments that contain key facts such as age, education, income and sex in order to identify consumer markets.

DESIGN Artistic process placing images and/or words into camera-ready copy.

DESKTOP PUBLISHING Book or ad design, layout, and production completed on a personal computer by specific software.

DIMENSIONAL A mailing piece with some heft and immediate visual presence, such as a box or tube, that often contains a gift or premium for the recipient. While dimensionals are expensive to produce and mail, they can be the most cost-effective way to reach difficult audiences, such as C-level executives or very wealthy consumers. Also known as “lumpy mail.”

DIMENSIONS The physical size of a book or collateral piece with respect to width and height and, in the case of a book, thickness; measured in inches, centimeters or pixels.

DIRECT MARKETING Promotions that target a specific audience based upon demographic and/or psychographic traits.

DIRECT-RESPONSE MARKETING Promotions that solicit an immediate and measurable response from recipients.

DISPLAY AD An eye-catching, illustrated ad that appears in print or on the Web.

DISTRIBUTOR A company that buys books from a publisher or other distributors and resells them to retail accounts.

DPS (Double-page spread) An advertise- ment or an article where the copy and imagery occupies two facing pages.

EBOOK (Electronic book) A book published in electronic format, typically a PDF, which can be downloaded to computers or handheld devices.

EDITING Changing or correcting the contents of a book in order to improve
the final results or to fit a format.

EPILOGUE Additional text at the end of the book that provides readers with additional information on the subject.

EXPOSURE With respect to advertising frequency, the number of advertising exposures deemed necessary in your marketing plan objectives to generate the required response from your target market. In book publishing, it relates to author exposure via book signings, press releases, reviews, etc.

FEATURES Unique selling qualities or properties that your product, service or book has; works hand-in-hand with key benefits. Each feature should have its own unique and innovative benefit(s).

FINAL DRAFT The final proof after all other proofing and editing steps have been completed before a manuscript or collateral goes to press.

FONT The type faces used in page or
ad design.

FOOTER Information that appears at the bottom of every page, within the normal lower margin of a document—for instance, page number.

FOREIGN RIGHTS Rights granted or sold that allows books to be printed and sold in other countries.

FPO (For position only) In mock-ups or comps, the acronym “FPO” is used to mark graphic elements, such as photos, that are merely placeholders, not approved compon- ents of the ultimate design.

FREELANCE An independent contractor hired to work on a book, design or marketing plan.

FRONT MATTER The series of pages that appear before the body of text.

FULFILLMENT The delivery of the product or service to the customer.

GALLEY The pre-publication copies sent
to the author for final proofreading or to reviewers for pre-publication reviews.

GENRE A specific category of literature, marked by distinctive style, form or content.

GEOGRAPHIC Selection or division of a mail list or other advertising medium along geographic lines. Geographic selects may be by state, county, metro area, city or
zip code.

GHOSTWRITING Writing under someone else's name, with his/her consent.

GRAPHICS The non-type parts of a book used to enhance content, such as drawings, illustrations, photographs, etc.

GREEKING The text equivalent of FPO graphics, “Greek” copy is Latin gibberish that simply illustrates where and how the copy will flow.

GUARANTEE Typically a promise to refund a customer’s money if he or she is less than satisfied with a product or service.

GUTTER The inside margins or blank space between two facing pages is the gutter. The gutter space is that extra space allowance used to accommodate the binding in books and magazines. The amount of gutter needed varies depending on the binding method. It’s also the space between columns of text on a page or the space between folds in a brochure.

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