Since I started my first blog back in 2006, I have always depended on my self to do everything. And that included designing, installing my sites, all of it. If I didn’t know how to do something, I read up on it and I did it. Now with my books I have done mostly everything myself. Well everything except for cover design. I actually wanted my book covers to look good. And I can thank Once Upon a Time Covers for that. She is awesome. I really can’t brag enough on her mad skills.
Now since I have social media skills from blogging and promoting my blogs and I have a lot of knowledge using Word and other word processors when I started my indie author journey I ran into a bit of a problem. I had no freaking clue what to all went into the front matter and back matter of a book. Sure, I could pull out any number of the many many books that I own and look there. But wouldn’t it be easier if there was a simple list to follow?
So I decided to just that and compile a list of things that one should include in the front matter of your books.
- Half-Title – This is normally just the title of the book.
- The next page is usually blank.
- Title page – This includes: Title, Sub-title, Author, Publisher.
- Copyright Page – Copyright notice, edition information, ISBN.
- Dedication
- Epigraph – Some authors like to include a quotation that has something to do with their work.
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue (optional, some authors do not use these.)
- Half-title.
I hope this list can help. Also for further help a lot of the indie publishing platforms will include help on what they require for things such as a copyright page.
Next I will be posting about back matter.
Leave a Reply