Indie Author Lingo

Do you speak Indie?

"Hey, Randall! How's the new book coming along?"

"Pretty good, I started it out in media res, but then the MS got bogged down right after the McGuffin, so I cycled it through Freytags and ended up changing it to a standard three-act with a long prologue. I had to rework all the plot points and hit a few more tropes, but it's back in my lane now. Funny thing is I thought it was going to be HR, but turns out the arc works better as PR with an HEA. Anyway, the rewrite pushed my deadline out past NaNo, which kind of sucks as I really wanted to make that this year. You know?"

"Uh…yeah."

"Anyway, I still have the backmatter to write and then I have to buy some more ISBN's, kern my title, work on the blurb, and then calculate all my spines. I'll do a final once the betas send it back and hopefully get it up for preorder on the Zon by December. I'll let you know."

"Okay…great?"

If you understood all that you're well on your way to speaking fluent indie. For the rest of us, there's help.

Like most professional occupations, writing and publishing have their own special lingo. An experienced author/publisher can quickly lose a newbie with a torrent of acronyms, insider terms, technical jargon, contractions, and colloquial speech.

When blogging, posting on various social media pages, or appearing on a podcast, veteran authors should make every effort to keep their words free of jargon and speak to their audience in a language that any aspiring author will easily understand.

There are times, however, when this is unavoidable. So let's visit a few of the terms, acronyms, and other jargon that you'll most often hear in the world of Indie Publishing.

Some key terms and acronyms to know:

KDP:

KDP stands for Kindle Direct Publishing. This is the service Amazon started back in 2008 that allows any author to create and publish books to the Amazon store. The service is free to use with Amazon taking around 30% of each sale. Amazon offers authors the option of publishing Ebooks, paperbacks in both standard and large print, and limited hardcovers. Authors can reach a worldwide audience of readers through Amazon's Expanded Distribution option. Authors retain full rights to their books and control the price, coverart, and content (within guidelines) of their books. Authors can place or pull their books from the Amazon store at will. Amazon offers a variety of tools to help authors construct their books and market them within the Amazon store. Most self-publishing authors start out at Amazon and then venture outside it to other sales platforms once they have gained some traction and familiarity with how the sales platforms work.

KU/Exclusivity:

KU is short for Kindle Unlimited, a monthly subscription service Amazon started in 2014 that gives its members access to digital books, audiobooks, comics, and various magazines that authors have enrolled in the program. Readers join for an $11.99/month fee and can then borrow up to 20 titles at a time with no deadline on their return. Indie authors may enroll their books in the Kindle Unlimited library for a renewable 3-month period. Authors are paid by the page-read, which is determined by Amazon. The average payout has been approximately $0.004–$0.0045 per page in recent years. , meaning that authors who have their books enrolled in KU cannot have those same books up for sale on ANY other platform. There are many advantages and disadvantages to having your library in KU. Authors will need to decide whether or not their books are the right fit for such a program.Authors who enroll their books in KU count on high-volume readers to achieve a return. KU requires exclusivity

Update (September 2025): Amazon updated its KDP Select terms to explicitly permit library distribution as an exception to exclusivity. KU-enrolled ebooks can now simultaneously be distributed to OverDrive, Hoopla, Libby, and other library platforms through services like Draft2Digital — without breaking KDP Select exclusivity. The new enrollment language reads: "During the 90-day enrollment period, the Kindle eBook can only be distributed through KDP and public libraries."

IP:

IP stands for Intellectual Property and the reason this is near the top of the list is it's the most important thing that self-publishers need to understand before putting their books up for sale.

Intellectual Property: a work or invention that is the result of creativity, such as a manuscript or a design, to which one has rights and for which one may apply for a patent, copyright, trademark, etc.

What that means is that when you load a book into the Amazon system you are not "selling books". What you are doing is licensing your intellectual property to them to distribute for a fee. The money you earn is both a royalty and proceeds from a sale.

PROCEEDS:

The total amount of money earned from a sale, before any costs or expenses are subtracted. Proceeds can be calculated by multiplying the price of goods sold by the number of units sold.

ROYALTIES:

Payments made to the owner of an asset, such as intellectual property, for the right to use it. Royalties are typically calculated as a percentage of revenue or sales generated from using that asset.

This makes copyrighting your work very important. See our guide on Copyright in the Security section to learn how to prove it.

WIDE:

The term WIDE (often capitalized) refers to authors who make their books available on every sales platform there is. You will often see authors or books identified as either "KU/Exclusive to Amazon" or "WIDE". There are advantages to both, which we discuss in other posts.

FORMAT:

When someone uses the word FORMAT in the indie world they are usually referring to the different "versions" of a book. The most common formats for indie authors are:

• eBook

• Paperback

• Hardcover

• Large Print

• Audiobook

Each format requires its own ISBN and its own dedicated file for uploading to the sales platform.

AGGREGATOR:

In the Indie Author world Aggregators come in two forms: those that distribute, and those that collect. Distributors are services that will publish your book to multiple platforms, handle any maintenance or price changes, and then collect the proceeds for you. Authors who wish to publish their work WIDE but lack the time to do so themselves will often use a service such as Draft2Digital or PublishDrive to do so. There are advantages and disadvantages to using an aggregator and we'll discuss them in a separate post.

The second type of aggregator is a sales report aggregator. This is a service that collects sales reports from multiple platforms and consolidates them into one dashboard. The main advantage is the time saved and the ability to analyze that data more easily with the tools that the service provides. ScribeCount is an Author Operating System (Author OS) that connects to over 57 different sales platforms — pulling your sales data, consolidating it into one dashboard, and adding business intelligence tools including catalog management, production tracking, email marketing, and an AI Digital Assistant. It is far more than a simple aggregator.

KENP:

KENP stands for Kindle Edition Normalized Pages. This is the unit Amazon uses to calculate how much authors earn from Kindle Unlimited page reads. Amazon normalizes all books to a standard page size and pays authors per normalized page read.

ARC:

ARC stands for Advance Review Copy. These are pre-publication copies of a book sent to readers, bloggers, and reviewers before the official release date, in exchange for an honest review posted on or around the launch date.

BETA READER:

A beta reader is a volunteer reader who reads a manuscript before publication and provides feedback on the story, characters, pacing, and overall readability. Beta readers are typically unpaid and are often fellow authors or avid readers of the genre.

HEA / HFN:

HEA stands for Happily Ever After and HFN stands for Happy For Now. These are reader expectations in romance novels. An HEA means the couple ends up together permanently; an HFN means they're happy at the end but their future together is left open. Many romance readers specifically require one of these endings.

TROPES:

In fiction, tropes are recurring themes, plot devices, or character archetypes that are commonly found within a genre. In romance, for example, popular tropes include "enemies to lovers," "forced proximity," and "second chance romance." Tropes are not a negative — readers actively seek them out.

POV:

POV stands for Point of View. In fiction writing, this refers to the perspective from which the story is told. Common options include first person (I), third person limited (he/she/they, limited to one character's perspective), and third person omniscient (all-knowing narrator).

BLURB:

The blurb is the book description — the marketing copy that appears on the back cover of a print book and in the product description on sales platforms like Amazon. A good blurb is essential; it's the primary sales tool for your book online.

BACKMATTER:

Backmatter refers to the content at the end of a book after the main story — including the author bio, acknowledgments, newsletter signup call-to-action, and links to other books in the series. Well-crafted backmatter is one of the most powerful marketing tools an indie author has.

PERMAFREE:

A permafree book is one that is permanently priced at $0.00. Authors often use the first book in a series as a permafree to attract new readers and then earn money on the rest of the series. KDP does not allow authors to directly set a price of $0, but authors can price-match to free through other wide platforms.

Artificial intelligence tools have become a significant part of the indie author landscape. Here are the key terms you'll encounter:

LLM (Large Language Model):

The AI technology behind tools like Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini. An LLM is trained on large amounts of text and can generate human-like responses. Authors use LLMs for brainstorming, drafting marketing copy, answering research questions, and more.

AI-ASSISTED WRITING:

Using AI tools to help with the writing process — brainstorming, outlining, editing suggestions, generating dialogue options — while the author writes and makes all creative decisions. AI-assisted writing is distinct from AI-generated content.

AI-GENERATED CONTENT:

Content where an AI tool produces the substantive text with minimal human creative direction. Amazon KDP requires authors to disclose in the publishing workflow when AI tools generate text, images, or translations in a published book.

AI DISCLOSURE (KDP):

Amazon's requirement that authors check a disclosure box during the KDP upload process when their book contains AI-generated text, cover art, or translations. The disclosure does not appear to readers and does not affect sales rank or royalties. Failing to disclose when required can result in book removal.

AI NARRATION:

Audiobook narration produced by AI voice technology rather than a human narrator. Platforms have varying policies on AI narration — some require disclosure, others restrict it. Always check the current policy of any audiobook platform before submitting AI-narrated content.

PROMPT ENGINEERING:

The practice of crafting specific, detailed instructions ("prompts") to get better results from AI tools. Authors who learn to write effective prompts get significantly better output from AI tools for tasks like writing blurbs, generating marketing copy, or brainstorming plot ideas.

We've only touched on a few of the many terms indie authors use every day here. To see a more complete list ScribeCount has published the book "Author Lingo". It contains over 250 pages of terms, acronyms, and abbreviations in one easy-to-use list. Free to all in eBook format. Get Author Lingo here

Conclusion

Mastering indie author lingo is part of joining a professional community. The more fluent you become in the language of self-publishing, the easier it will be to consume the resources, engage in discussions, and make the business decisions that move your career forward. Keep this list handy and add to it as you encounter new terms on your journey.

 - Randall