When you talk about the state of a company's order book or order books, you are talking about how many orders for their goods the company has. He has a full order book for his boat-building yard on the Thames. a record of how many goods or services a company has been asked to provide, which shows how successful it is financially
A listing of open (unshipped) customer orders, normally time-phased and valued at actual individual order prices, that may include margin and profitability analysis
When the underwriter refers to how well orders are building for an IPO or a secondary deal, he means the book or listing of buy orders from investors The book for a deal can be many times oversubscribed In fact, an oversubscribed deal is desired by both underwriters and investors, because it means that there will be an initial pop in the stock when it begins trading and subsequent aftermarket orders