Self-Publishing Made Simple – Adding Front and Back Material
This is Part 3 on my Self-Publishing Made Simple series. Today we’re discussing front and back material that you might want to add to your manuscript. In terms of Front Matter, less is better. Some of these items under that category you can move to the back. You want readers to access the first chapter as quickly as possible for the “Look Inside” feature on Amazon. Some authors include a brief story blurb here so ebook readers will remember what the book is about if they don’t get to it for a while.
Front Material may include:
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Cast of Characters
• Family Tree
• Table of Contents
• Character Timelines
• Map of Setting
• Story Blurb with Review Quotes
• Call to Action for Newsletter Sign-Up
Back Material may include:
• Acknowledgments
• Author’s Note
• Call to Action for Reviews
• About the Author (Bio + Social Media Sites)
• More Books by [Author]
• Excerpt of Next Title [Note: Don’t call it Chapter One since you already have this title in the book.]
• Bonus Content
• Call to Action for Newsletter
• Buy Links or Website Link
After your story ends, you’ll have the chance to add bonus materials, a list of your books, an excerpt of the sequel, reader discussion questions, and more. Here again you can put a Call to Action for your newsletter. Regarding buy links, keep in mind that certain vendors don’t like you to mention other online distributors. You’re always safe if you give the books page on your website. Otherwise you’ll have to change the buy link for each book distributor.
Self-Publishing Part 3 - Adding Front & Back Material #indiepublishing #amwriting Share on XDo you have any tips to add regarding front and back material?
4 thoughts on “Self-Publishing Made Simple – Part 3”
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As of now, I haven’t self-published. However, Nancy, this is certainly helpful information! Thanks for sharing.
It’s information you might need someday, so I’m glad you are stopping by and taking a look.
I use Draft2Digital to create my epub files, and they have a lot of these choices built into their templates, including a “More by the Author” that updates automatically. If you distribute that same epub to the other channels, you would have to reupload it after you have a new book come out, but you don’t have to touch the actual document file. And they link to Universal Book Links, which means readers can find links to all the sales channels.
Amazon’s the only stick-in-the-mud about this, wanting everything done their way, so I usually direct people to my Amazon page for back matter there. But it still beats redoing book files for 5 different channels.
Doesn’t the “More by the Author” only work for books submitted through D2D? Like, if you still had books with a trad publisher, these books would not show up on D2D’s feature? That’s why I’ve been redoing my book list page as back material, at least until I get all my rights reverted.