If you’re a self-published author, you’re familiar with the challenges of that process, from the story itself to the design of your book cover, editing, marketing, and much more. The goal, of course, is for no one to be able to tell that you’re a self published author. Which means your book needs to resemble one produced by the any of the Big Five: Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Hachette. That level of quality may not be possible, but you can come close, as long as you pay attention to all of the myriad details.

One of these details that’s easy to overlook is all the different parts of your book interior. Not just your content, but your book’s metadata or metacontent such as the Table of Contents, Prologue, Acknowledgements, and so on.

Each book part has a different, specific purpose, and needs to contain the right information, be written by the right person, and appear in the right order. You may think you know the parts of a book well enough just by having read a lot of them, but the difference between a Foreword, Introduction, and Preface isn’t always obvious or common sense. That’s where this reference comes in, because conflating book parts is a good way to broadcast that your book was published by a hobbyist or amateur.

There are three main sections in every book: the front matter, body matter, and back matter. The front matter contains technical data about your book. The body matter is your story or content. The back matter contains more detailed information about you, the author, those who helped with your book’s creation, definitions, indices, and promotional material.

This is a practical guide for writer’s today. It lists and describes all the parts within each section that are applicable to your book today. It leaves out antiquated book parts, like the frontispiece. The parts are listed in the order in which they should generally appear in your book, and when these is latitude for variation from this order, it states that too. The listed parts apply to e-books as well as print books, except for the Index, which is not necessary in an e-book due to the searchability of that media type.

You shouldn’t attempt to include every part listed below. The ones you do include will partially be determined by the type of book you’re writing, and partially by your own personal style. Some, like the copyright page, are mandatory, obviously, but most are optional, an a la carte selection from which you will choose to include those parts that speak to you, or make sense for your project.

The front matter is the first section of your book the reader encounters. This section generally displays the title, the parties involved in making the book (such as the publisher and author), and technical details such as the copyright page. This section often includes input from the author about what inspired or drove the project. The front matter is usually numbered using lower case roman numerals starting with “ii” on the copyright page (the title page number “i” generally doesn’t appear). The front matter includes:

• Title page — contains the title of the book, the subtitle, the name of the author(s), and the publisher. First right page in a printed book.

• Copyright page — also called the edition notice, it is one page that contains the copyright boilerplate notice, the Library of Congress catalog identification, the ISBN (assigned by Amazon or purchased from Bowker), the edition, any legal notices, and any credits for book design, illustration, or photography. The copyright page may contain your contact information for those readers wishing to reprint any portions of your book, as well. In print this is the first left page, the back of the title page.

• Dedication — no more than one page long; a sentence or two in which the author honors an individual or individuals with the writing of their book.

• Table of Contents — the TOC is an outline of the book’s story or progression, dividing the complete body of work into chapters. Nonfiction books often group Chapters together into Parts (for instance in a textbook where each part is an area of study) but modern fiction books seldom use Parts at all. In fiction, chapters are usually just sequentially numbered, breaking the story into logical components. In nonfiction books each chapter almost always includes a few words representing its subject. Chapter lengths can vary, depending on writer and story.

• Foreword — note the spelling of “Foreword”, which is different from the spelling of the more commonly used “forward”. The Foreword is a short section written by someone other than the author that summarizes or sets up the theme of the book. The person who writes the Foreword is often an eminent colleague or associate, a professional who has had personal interaction with the author. “Foreword by [person of note]” is often included on the cover, as it is a tacit endorsement and helps readers identify the book’s theme or genre. The Foreword is more common in nonfiction.

• Preface — written by the author and tells reader how and why the book came into being. It’s usually focused on the writing process, and is more common in nonfiction.

• Acknowledgements — a public thank you for the support and contributions of individuals who were involved in the project. The author has leeway with this section’s placement as well. Acknowledgements can be in the Front Matter, usually here e before the Introduction, or may be placed in the Back Matter. If it feels more natural for you to thank people prior to a special event or after one, and whether said thanks might give something away about your story or content, should determine where you place your Acknowledgements.

• Introduction — while it is common for a nonfiction book to possess both a Preface and Introduction, in fiction, only one should included (or neither). An Introduction is usually seen in nonfiction. It defines some key concepts or introduces readers to the main topic of the manuscript. It is more related to the book content or story than the Preface, which is about the process.

• Prologue — more common in fiction than nonfiction, and is usually written from a character’s point of view, adding additional context that will help the reader understand the story.

• Epigraph — short, no more than a paragraph, it is usually a quote or excerpt from a novel, poem, song, or religious text that alludes to the book’s theme in a way the reader doesn’t fully understand until the book progresses. The Epigraph can sometimes even be a quote by the author or by one of the characters (real or fictitious) in the book itself. The writer has some leeway with the location of the Epigraph, if choosing to include one. It can be placed between the Dedication and TOC, or directly after the TOC, or on the left page facing the first Chapter, which is preferable. If Parts are used, which is more common in nonfiction, then a separate Epigraph can appear on the left page facing each Part.

• Parts/Acts — parts are more common in nonfiction and break the overall text into logical parts, for example a textbook with parts representing different areas of study; acts are more common in fiction and there are usually three; each part or act is comprised of several to many chapters.
  • Chapters —seen in both fiction and nonfiction. Nonfiction chapters generally possess titles alongside the numbers; in fiction both are acceptable but chapter numbers sans titles are more common.
    • Sections — more common in nonfiction than fiction, and in nonfiction sections with titles are again the norm.

The back matter is usually more significant in nonfiction than fiction, whose back matter will often consist of Author’s Bio and marketing for other books by the author or from the publisher. Nonfiction may possess five or six of the below parts:

• Epilogue or Afterword — an Afterword can be found in either fiction or nonfiction. It is often written by someone other than the author and tells something about the story and how it came to be written. An Afterword may be written by the author themselves, but usually occurs in later editions of the book to reflect on how it has changed. If the author wrote the Foreword they should not write the Afterword. An Epilogue is generally seen in fiction and serves as a kind of final chapter taking place outside the time, setting, or perspective of the story. It can provide closure or resolution to a character arc and serves as a kind of cathartic release if the story ended in a suspenseful or harrowing way. The Epilogue is often considered part of the Body Matter, although since page numbering is consistent within the Body Matter and Back Matter, it doesn’t really make a difference.
• Acknowledgments — if you choose to include this section in the back matter, this is where it should go.
• Glossary — contains terminology or acronyms that are unusual or technical and need defining for most readers. These terms will be defined within the content itself, then again in the glossary. More common in nonfiction.
• Bibliography or Endnotes — both are much more common in nonfiction and appear in the back matter but they have different purposes. Endnotes provide additional information about an idea, when including it in the main text would have interrupted the flow of the story or idea discussed. When writing digresses and gets too far off point, an endnote could be useful. A bibliography has a specific format following the rules of a style guide such as Chicago Manual of Style. It allows readers to look up or verify sources for claims made or statistics used. Inclusion of a bibliography gives the work credibility.
• Author’s Biography — the author bio is marketing as well, of course. Use this page to sell yourself as the only one who could possibly have written your book, either because of your status as a subject matter expert or due to personal experiences or circumstances that gave you a point of view more relevant than others. This is usually the last left page of a printed book.
• Marketing — not an official book section, but a practical one: an “Also by the Author” page is how this section normally appears. This can appear in the front matter as well, but if so, should be no more than a page or two in length. In the back matter, this section can be more substantial.
• Index — list of terms and on which page each appears. Much less common in fiction, and not used in the e-book version, whose search capabilities make it unnecessary.

And there you have it. If you disagree about the order of parts, or think I left something out that should have been included, please use the comments and let me know. This document will be revised from time to time.