Self-Publish Today

Are readers seeing your offer or other important information you’re giving them at the beginning of your book?

Possibly not!

Most tablet style readers like the Kindle and iPad send readers right to your Introduction – skipping over the front matter of your book. But that’s okay. You still need front matter. Read on to find out the best place to put your important calls-to-action…

First, though, what makes up the typical front matter of a book (even a Kindle book)?

Of course, you want to include the typical front matter in your Kindle book. So let’s start with what is the typical front matter.

The beginning pages of your book should include a copyright page, a dedication, a table of contents, and possibly any disclaimers that you would like to make.

If you need an example of a copyright page, just open up any one of the books you already own and take a look at how they’ve done it. That’s the easiest way.

Basically, the copyright page should include a copyright symbol plus the year that your book is published. It should also include the publisher is. And of course, you want to include that you the author wrote the book. In some cases, you may have an ISBN number, an ASIN number, or a library control (LCCN) number. You can include all of those on the copyright page.

Some books have a dedication. I recommend that you dedicate your book to someone or some cause. Why not?

In some books, it makes sense to include a disclaimer about the information that your sharing in your book. For example, if you write on health related topic, you may want to express the fact that some readers may experience a different result from the things he recommend in your book. If you’re really worried about the things you say in your book possibly causing someone to sue you then it’s a good idea to have an attorney help you with the disclaimer text.

Your book should also include a table of contents. In Kindle books, the table of contents should be hyperlinks. These hyperlinks allow readers to click on a chapter or subtopics within a chapter and move directly to that location in your book. Most word processors can automatically generate a table of contents for you. And these automatically generated table of contents can also be made into hyperlinks right inside the word processor.

That covers the basics of what belongs in the front of your book. However, one of the most important pieces to the front of your book is going to be your call to action to readers. This is where you ask the reader to come and visit your website and ultimately join your email list.

So where should you put this call to action?

Your call to action belongs in the introduction to your book. Why the introduction? I like to put my call to action in the introduction because Kindle often forces books to open at the introduction of the book skipping over the rest of the front matter.

So the reader would have to manually scroll back and view the front matter pages to see your call to action. Making the reader go this kind of trouble will greatly reduce the number of people who actually do it.

You, as a writer, don’t want to rely on readers to flip through pages of the book at the beginning to find a way to reach out to you or find other important information you want to share.

Therefore, the most important take-away from this article is to be sure that anything you want your readers to see and be aware of in your book should really be included in your introduction or later in the book.

Next, read about what goes in the back matter of your book. It’s not just the glossary and appendix!

Every page in your book counts. Including the back matter.

Are you taking advantage of this precious space?

Maybe you have read my article about what to include in the front matter of a Kindle book. If not, you can read it here.

Especially with electronic books, tablet readers like the Kindle often force you to skip over all the front matter pages and start the reader at the introduction to your book. That makes the back matter of your book extremely important.

But I’m not just talking about e-books here.

The back matter is important for any book you publish whether it’s a print book or an e-book.

Here’s why:

There are two things that are critically important to your writing career: your ability to communicate with the audience of fans who love your books; and secondly to be able to help boost your book rank on the major book selling platforms.

Growing your audience of fans depends upon your ability to get readers who enjoy your book to click over to your website and join your email list. Or become a fan of yours on your Facebook page. Or follow you on social media. Whatever means of communication you prefer, it’s critical that your fans the able to connect with you in a way that allows you to communicate back with them so you can let them know about your upcoming projects and cool stuff you have going on.

Now the other thing I mentioned was boosting the rank of your book – how prevalent it is presented on  online book sellers like Amazon. Boosting your book rank is directly related to getting (positive) reviews. Ranks on the major book sales platforms like Amazon affect how many people see your book. Getting good reviews is essential to help boost the rank and placement of your book. So you have to constantly work to get more reviews.

So how does the back matter fit in with building/communicating with your audience and getting reviews?

Well, since you know that electronic books are forcing readers past much of the front matter, you are left with the back matter as the key place for positioning your calls-to-action to readers.

The first thing you should do in your back matter – basically the page following the last page of your book – should be a request for the reader to leave you a review wherever they bought the book. Again, this goes for print books or e-books. Always ask for the review.

Possibly on the same page, or even on the page after your ask for a review, you should tell your readers why they should visit your website and join your email list.

Here is an added piece which I didn’t mentioned earlier, but is also critical in helping build your brand. Add a page that has thumbnail images of the other books you read.

Never assume your reader knows what to do next. What they need, is a leader. You are that leader. You don’t have to be a drill sergeant, but it is a great idea for your business to gracefully help your reader understand what you want them to do next.

Finally, you can carry on with the rest of your back matter like the appendix, the bibliography, and anything else you feel is important to communicate as it relates to your book.

Be sure that all of your books take advantage of the back matter of the book to position your calls to action and ultimately grow your business. Never waste a page!

Photo from zach Mccarthy on Flickr