What goes in a book: front matter & back matter explained

Open any professionally published book and the story doesn't start on page one — there's a little run of pages before it (the front matter) and a few after it (the back matter). Getting these right is one of the quickest ways to make a self-published book feel legitimate. None of it is complicated; it's mostly convention. Here's what each page is, and the order they go in.

Front matter, in order

1. Half-title page — just the book's title, alone on the page. A quiet, elegant opener.
2. Title page — title, subtitle, author, and often the publisher or imprint. This is the "designed" page readers notice.
3. Copyright page — copyright notice, year, edition, ISBN, and any "all rights reserved" wording. Traditionally sits on the back of the title page.
4. Dedication — "For…". Short, personal, its own page.
5. Epigraph — an optional quotation that sets the tone, with attribution.
6. Table of contents — usual for nonfiction and many memoirs; often skipped in straightforward novels.

Then the body of the book begins. You don't need every one of these — a novel might use only a title page and copyright page — but this is the order they appear when you do.

A note on recto and verso

In a printed book, right-hand pages are recto and left-hand pages are verso. By convention, important pages — the title page, the first page of a chapter — start on a recto (right-hand) page. That's why you'll sometimes see a blank page inserted: it's nudging the next section onto the right-hand side. Good formatting tools handle this for you.

Back matter, in order

1. Acknowledgments — thanking the people who helped (can also go in the front).
2. About the author — a short bio, ideally with a line about where readers can find you.
3. Also by this author — a list of your other titles. Free marketing for your own catalogue.
4. Newsletter / call to action — invite readers to join your mailing list or leave a review. For indie authors, this page quietly does a lot of work.

The copyright page: what to actually put

You don't need a lawyer. A standard copyright page includes the title, "Copyright © [year] [your name]", a short "all rights reserved" sentence, the edition, and your ISBN if you have one. You can add a line crediting your cover designer or your website. That's it.

Doing it the easy way in Bookmint

Rather than building these pages by hand, Bookmint adds each with a single toggle. The Title & Pages tab has a half-title, an auto-filled copyright page, dedication and epigraph for the front; and acknowledgments, about-the-author, also-by and a newsletter/CTA page for the back. The title-page designer gives you seven layouts with editable subtitle, tagline and publisher, and the table of contents generates itself from your chapter headings with real page numbers. Everything lands in the right order automatically — so your book opens like one that came from a publishing house.