I made a presentation about book design to the Federation of BC Writers on January 24 and everyone wanted a copy of my material. I give my presentations from an outline, so I couldn’t just photocopy it. But I did promise to post it here on my website.

In order to make it more manageable both for me to write and for you to absorb, I plan to put the information up in three different posts – Interiors – Ebook Formatting – Covers.

First, here is a list of the Design Features of a Book. It’s pretty comprehensive and you probably won’t use all the features. But if you are going to publish your own work, you should understand what goes into the interior of a book. I will explain some of the important features in my upcoming posts. My preferred style guide is The Chicago Manual of Style.

DESIGN FEATURES OF A BOOK

FRONT MATTER

Half title page

Frontispiece

Title page

Legal page (copyright notice, CIP, publisher’s address, etc)

Dedication

Epigraph

Table of contents

List of illustrations

List of tables

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments (if not part of Preface)

Introduction (if not part of text)

List of abbreviations or chronology

BODY

Running heads

Chapters

Headings and sub-headings

BACK MATTER

Appendix

Glossary

Bibliography

Index