I’ve written a great deal about laying out your book, and we even have an entire section of our knowledge base dedicated to these questions. But we’ve got some great content about creating a cover. For this post, we will not focus on the cover. Your cover is going to be an enormous piece of how you sell your book.

Usually, this includes the About the Author, any sort of index or bibliography, and often a few blank pages. Just like the Front Matter, Back Matter is everything after the main content of your book. All of this is collectively called Front Matter. You’ll see a half-title and full title, a copyright page, a table of contents, acknowledgments, an introduction, and any other information you need to provide a reader before they dive into the main content. When you open a book, the first page is not the beginning of your story. Remember, the content includes text and images, as well as anything else, like tables or charts. The story you tell, the manual or guide you wrote to share your expertise, the history you’re recounting, or whatever your book might be. Let’s quickly review the parts of a book that you design for your book layout. You’ll need to carefully design your book file using book layout software to turn that manuscript into a print-ready file. Even though both are composed of your content-the story you have to tell, a guide or manual, a textbook for the class you’re teaching-the manuscript is the raw content. The first three combine to make your print-ready PDF file, while the cover will get designed separately.įor this post, we’re going to focus on the first three, but if you’re ready to work on your cover, ‌get started by reading this article.įirst things first your book design turns your manuscript into a complete file for your book. There are four essential parts of your book the front matter, content, back matter, and cover. Let’s review the best practice book page layout and page format. Looking at a book off a bookstore shelf, it’s easy to miss the amount of work and time that goes into the book layout. As if writing a book isn’t hard enough, you’ll also need to plan your marketing, determine how to sell the book, and know how to layout a book. If you’ve self-published a book, you’re familiar with the many challenges involved‌.

Book layout template