Front and Back Matter

In this article, you’ll learn how to add and format front and back matter pages.

If you haven’t yet set the theme of your book, you may want to check out Part 1 and 2 from this series, linked in the description box below.

Once your theme is customized, it’s time to tackle the front and back matter pages of your book.

Front Matter Pages

Atticus is stocked with a variety of specially formatted pages, designed to meet industry standards and expectations, and available according to the needs of your book. Let’s take a closer look at a few of the most important pages. 

Custom Title Page

Atticus automatically generates a Title Page based on the details you input for your book. While this is fully functional, it’s not always as graphically pleasing as you might want it to be. There are a few ways you can customize this page to help it better match the overall design of your book. 

First,delete the auto-generated version. To replace it, you can either add a Chapter or use a pre-designed full page image.

Let’s try the basic chapter design first. Add the Chapter and drag it into place. This page will follow the theme settings you created in Part 1 or 2 of this series. 

Change the title to the title of your book, add your subtitle if applicable or use this space for your author name. If you have a subtitle, you can add your author name in the body content. Depending on your theme settings, you may need to place an extra space above your name to remove any drop caps or lead in small caps.

Your title page now matches the overall theme of your book.

Another option is to insert a pre-designed image to use as a title page. Choose Add Full Page Image and drag it into place. Retitle it with the name of your book and upload your image. 

Ideally, you’ll size the image to match the trim settings of your print book and then choose either to extend the image to the margins of your book, or to full bleed.

Now my Title Page is a reflection of the Cover of my book, with all the necessary details and a little bit more style.

Copyright Page

Next, let’s look at the copyright page. This is automatically generated by Atticus with every new or imported book. You can simply adjust a few details for your book, or you can copy and paste your own copyright information into this page to maintain the industry standard formatting.

Table of Contents

The Table of Contents is not editable, though you can adjust the layout by choosing whether or not to number your chapters in the left navigation panel. If you click the three dots beside any chapter title, you can un-number it and this will adjust the layout in the TOC.

You can also change the title of this page by clicking on your book details and checking Custom TOC Title and entering your preferred headline here.

If you have any other front matter pages that you’d like to include in your book, you have a variety of specially formatted pages to choose from. To learn more about the styles for each page, check out the post Special Page Formats.

Any pages that are dragged above the TOC will not be included in the TOC. If the page appears below the TOC in the Front Matter section of your book, it will be included in the TOC without the initial numbering. In print versions, Roman Numerals will be used to distinguish the page numbers from the standard pagination of the body content of your book. 

Back Matter Pages

You may also want to add Back Matter with some custom elements. You can find out more about the special formatting for these pages in the linked post below as well.

A few more things to keep in mind is that you can include URLs in digital versions of your book, but links will be stripped for the PDF version prepared for print. 

If you’d like to have an About Author, Also By, or Review Requests page that is easy for your readers to find specific webpages, you may want to consider including QR codes for your print versions. 

Kindlepreneur has a fantastic, free QR Code generator you can use to produce as many codes as you need. 

If you would like to include different versions of these pages to appear only in your eBook or Print versions, you can click the three dots beside the page title and choose Include On > eBook Only or Print Only, respectively.

You can do this for any of the pages in your Front or Back matter if you’d like unique versions.

If you’d like to include cover images of your books in an Also By Page, you can attach a link to the image itself for digital versions, rather than use a traditional URL.

Backup and Download Account File

Your work will automatically save as you write, format, or design, so whenever you’re done for a session, you can simply click Home and go back to your home page. If you’d like additional peace of mind, you can press this download button at any time to force a backup of your entire account. The json file that downloads can be used to restore your account to this point if anything out of the ordinary were to happen.

Design Your Book with Atticus – Next In Series

Now you know how to add Front and Back Matter pages to your manuscript using Atticus, getting you closer to the final stages of publishing your book.

In Part 4 of this series, you’ll learn how to add more design and style to individual chapters of your manuscript.