Author Lingo: The Free Glossary Every Indie Author Needs
Every industry develops its own shorthand, and indie publishing is no exception. Somewhere between drafting your first manuscript and navigating your first KDP dashboard, you'll run into a wall of acronyms and insider terms that nobody bothers to explain, because everyone already using them forgot there was ever a time they didn't know what an ARC, a BISAC code, or going wide actually meant. Author Lingo exists to tear that wall down.
Author Lingo is a free, downloadable PDF reference covering over 250 pages of indie publishing terms, acronyms, and abbreviations in one easy-to-use, alphabetized format. It's available to every author at no cost, with no signup wall standing between you and the answer to whatever term just stopped you mid-sentence in a Facebook group or a craft article.
What's Actually In It
Author Lingo runs the full alphabet, A through Z, covering the vocabulary spanning the entire indie author journey: craft and manuscript terms, editing and production jargon, cover design and formatting language, the acronym soup of retailer and distribution platforms, marketing and advertising shorthand, and the business and legal terms that come with running a publishing operation. If you've ever paused on a term like wide, wallflower romance, wholesaler, wide release window, wide vs. exclusive, wholesale discount, or wishlist conversion, and weren't fully sure which definition applied in context, this is built for exactly that moment.
Manuscript and craft terms — structural, genre, and editorial vocabulary used throughout the writing and revision process
Production and design terms — formatting, cover design, and the technical language of turning a manuscript into a finished book
Platform and distribution acronyms — the alphabet soup of retailers, aggregators, and distribution terms covered throughout this resource library's various sections
Marketing and advertising shorthand — terms that come up constantly in this resource library's Marketing section and in author communities, demystified in plain language
Business and legal vocabulary — the terms that show up once you start treating your writing as an actual publishing operation
Why a Glossary Matters More Than It Seems
This resource library covers hundreds of articles across publishing, marketing, direct sales, audiobooks, and more, and like any specialized field, it uses field-specific language throughout, on the reasonable assumption that the term has been explained somewhere. Author Lingo is the backstop for exactly that gap: a single place to look up any unfamiliar term without having to track down which specific article first introduced it. It's less a standalone read and more a reference you keep open in another tab, the same way a writer keeps a dictionary or style guide within reach.
A real example of the kind of fluency this closes the gap on: "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 Freytag's and ended up changing it to a standard three-act with a long prologue... funny thing is I thought it was going to be HR, but turns out the arc works better as PR with an HEA." Every indie author eventually talks like this. Author Lingo is how you get there faster, and how you keep up with everyone who already does.
Free to Download, No Strings Attached
Author Lingo is offered as a free PDF download, available to any author regardless of whether they use ScribeCount's other tools. There's no paywall and no required signup to access it. Authors are also welcome to share the download link with their own readers, writing groups, or communities, since the more indie authors who have quick access to a clear, accurate reference, the healthier the wider self-publishing community becomes.
The same cover used for Author Lingo's published edition is available for reuse in your own marketing or recommendation posts when sharing the resource, consistent with the cover and branding methods covered throughout this resource library's Marketing section.
Conclusion
Indie publishing comes with its own dense, fast-evolving vocabulary, and there's no reason any author should have to guess their way through it. Author Lingo puts over 250 pages of that vocabulary in one place, free, downloadable, and ready whenever an unfamiliar term stops you mid-read. Keep it close, share it freely, and never let an acronym slow down your progress again.
- Randall