A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic.

Shane at the enotes books blog points us to The Chronicle of Higher Education's useful and proper gloss on publishing terms. We herewith submit an alternative list, a sort of Devil's Dictionary of the publishing world, "Tom's Glossary of Book Publishing Terms."

From the Chronicle:
Blurbs: Spy magazine used to have a column called "Logrolling in Our Time": In pairs of reciprocal blurbs, authors would puff each other's books. Don't ask your mother for a blurb (unless she's a famous author in your field). Blurbs can help buyers to situate your work by seeing the intellectual company you keep.

According to Tom:
Blurb: A brief noise that embarrasses everyone.

Chronicle:
Publication date: A date, six to eight weeks after the bound book is available, before which news media are not supposed to review the book (to allow it time to get from the warehouse into the stores). Often, with scholarly books, the official pub date comes and goes accompanied by radio silence.

Tom:
Publication date: A sliding holiday based on the phases of the moon.

And so on.

Photo of a printer's devil from the photostream of One Lucky Guy

Comments

[xensen]

Tom here, just saying thanks for the link!

[Dave]

This is fixed now, and I commend Tom's list to all and sundry: "ADVANCE: A secret code signalling to the marketing department whether or not to promote a title.", "BEST SELLER: A book purchased for display." Priceless.

[Dave]

The link to "Tom's Glossary of Book Publishing Terms" goes to the Devil's Dictionary... which is a pity, as I'd like to hear more from Tom. He's spot on about the meaning of the term "publication date", anyhow, as I have to explain, ooh, several times a day to customers in the bookstore where I work, who seem convinced that it means that books become magically, instantly available everywhere at zero hour on the given day.