bookpublishing

I’m telling you: a very sizable chunk of the work I do on a book is on the front matter (everything that occurs before the first page of the first chapter). Most of my work today dealt with the front matter on one book. I feel like I spend a whole lot more attention on the front matter than even a very curious reader would when reading the book. Consider a few crucial things to work out in the front matter when editing a book:

-Deciding if it is going to have a half title page and a blank to begin the book (sometimes for aesthetic reasons, other times to make form).
-Making sure the title page has the correct title, subtitle, author(s) name(s), illustrator/photographer(s) name(s), name of other writers (writer of the foreword, for instance), the correct imprint, logo, location.
-All the junk on the copyright page really stresses people out. Who even reads the copyright page? Oh yeah, lawyers do. You need the correct copyright year and owner, all rights reserved, photo credits, text copyright credits, text design credits, layout credits, editing credits, map credits, trademarks, logos, and imprint information. Then there’s the ISBN and Library of Congress Data, location of printing, and printing line. And probably a dozen other doodads.
-The TOC (table of contents): Where does it start? How many pages is it?
-Dedication. Acknowledgments. Preface. Foreword. Introduction. Sometimes a mix of those.
-Another title page? or part opener? What about photos?

Of course it’s also important that the front matter is paged with roman numerals. That makes it easy to change, move, delete, and reorder material in the front matter without causing reflow in the text. (”Reflow” means moving main body text to a new page or changing page numbers in the main text.)

It all has to be planned so it’s the right number of pages and that everything falls on the page it should. Then the book is designed and you find out you’re six pages over form. So you change the front matter all around again. What a waste of time!

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