The first step to publishing a high-quality book is to prepare your manuscript before you submit it for publishing. Doing this not only ensures that you can avoid errors in the book, but also ensures a seamless publishing experience.
Typically, your manuscript should have three sections - The Front Matter, Body Text and The Back Matter
The Front Matter
The front matter consists of the Dedication page, Acknowledgement, Foreword, Author’s Note, etc.
Although the front matter pages are only optional, you can choose which one of these pages you’d like to include based on your book’s category and what pages do justice in introducing or providing context for your book (especially if you’re writing under the Non-Fiction / Academic genre). Learn which front-matter sections to add in your book and how to write them here.
Body Text
The Content or the Body of your book is the text and/or images you have, inside your book to tell your story or share your knowledge or teach readers about your field of expertise. This usually includes part pages, chapters, and text subdivisions, etc. Learn how to arrange chapters and prepare your body text here.
If you plan to add images to your book, please follow our guide on How to prepare images in your manuscript for printing
Back/End Matter
The Back/ End matter is usually found after the Body/Main content ends. It consists of sections like the epilogue, glossary, appendix, references, index, etc. Academic books usually have extensive end matter sections that provide additional information on the text given in the book.
Just like the front matter, the Back/End matter pages are also optional. You can choose which one of these pages you’d like to include based on your book’s category and what pages do justice in providing additional information that readers can use while reading your book. Learn which Back/End-matter sections to add to your book and how to write them here.