Dedication
An author’s statement of appreciation or compliments to a specific person or group of people to whom the book is dedicated.

Design
Layout, selection of font and font size and typesetting of a book. See Formatting.

Desktop publishing
Book design, layout, and production completed on a personal computer by specific software.

Draft
The book’s manuscript at a particular stage. The first draft is followed by rough drafts, which are unpolished versions. The final draft is sent to prepress.

Distributor
A company that warehouses, catalogs, markets, and sells books to bookstores, libraries, and wholesalers on behalf of a number of small publishers, consolidating those costs.

Dummy
A rough mock-up of a book that usually shows where all front matter, text and illustrations, and back matter will appear. Some dummies include actual sketches and images.

Dust jacket
The outer cover of a book, which is often detachable. It has folded front and back flaps, by which it attaches to the front and back book covers themselves. Often the front flap summarizes the contents of the book, provides biographical information about the author and offers words of praise (known as a blurb) from celebrities or authorities in the book’s subject area on the back flap.