Frontmatter – what does it contain?

In the last posting I mentioned that when you are considering POD, you have to format the text exactly as you want it. And ‘exactly’ means what it says. You can of course obtain virtually any service, if you can’t or don’t want to do it yourself. But I spent some time looking at a variety of books, and checked out what is in a book apart from the text. The largest part of this is the 'frontmatter' - things like the copyright page, preface, title page and so on which appear before the text itself.
I give below what I saw in a representative range of books, ordered by physical page number. Note that when I refer to page 1, I mean the first printed page, not the cover.
Page 1. Title page. This typically contains the title, and sometimes the author’s name. For example

The Octogenarian Ski-jumper

Page 2. Usually blank, but may contain a list of other books by the same author.
Page 3. Title page again. This typically contains the title, the author’s name, and in contrast to page 1, the name of the publisher. It may also include the sub-title if your book has one. For example

The Octogenarian Ski-jumper:
a compilation of achievements

and recognitions at all ages


Martin McGovern

Page 4. The copyright page. At a minimum, this will contain the author’s name, the copyright symbol ‘©’ and the year of publication. It will typically also contain the ISBN number of the book, the name and sometimes the address of the publisher, website information associated with the book and/or the author, and legal information. the font used for the copyright page is usually slightly smaller than for the rest of the text. For example:

Copyright © by Martin McGovern 2009
Martin McGovern has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the author’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

http://octogenarianski-jumper.blogspot.com

Page 5. From this point onward, there is more variation in the order of the items in the frontmatter. But in general, Page 5 contains either a quotation of some kind, or a dedication. In Stephen Potter’s hilarious Lifemanship (itself dedicated ‘To Anon’), he advises a dedication ‘to Phyllis, in the hope that God’s glorious gift of sight may be restored to her’. The thinking is that no reviewer will say anything bad about the book.
Page 5 can sometimes contain either Acknowledgements - information of the form ‘I would like to thank the following people who helped me research and write this book’ – or the Contents – typically a list of chapters and the page numbers they start on. There is a theory that each person you include in the Acknowledgements will buy a copy of the book, and may even buy several copies to give to their friends. But don't include too many - most readers won't care if your best friend once made you a cup of tea when you had writer's block.
Page 6. Usually blank, unless the Contents or Acknowledgements run to more than one page.
Page 7. Usually the Contents if you’re including them and haven’t yet.
Page 8. Usually blank unless the Contents on page 7 run to more than one page.
Page 9. The most likely page for the text itself to start on. But other frontmatter items may be required – for example, a preface/introduction, or a list of illustrations. The rule in general is that a new frontmatter item will start on an odd-numbered page, and so will the text. One other item you might want to consider is a repeat of the title page: if you’ve included bulky text such as acknowledgements or an introduction, it’s a good way of indicating to the reader that the book itself is about to start.

One other thing you'll notice about the frontmatter is that some of the pages don't have page numbers. If there are page numbers, they are much more likely to be in roman numbers (i, ii, iii, iv and so on) than traditional 'arabic' numbers. I'll be addressing the fiddly matter of formatting and getting the page numbering you want in a later posting.

How I selected lulu.com for self-publishing

Once I had made the decision to self publish, the next question was how? Well since you're reading this you know about the internet, and a few google searches later, I identified two possible ways forward. The first was to adopt a traditional approach to publishing - essentially, find a printer I like and get them to print a batch of books, which I then receive, store, and sell. The second was to use a 'print on demand', or POD, approach. The way this works is that you write your book EXACTLY as you want it - title page, copyright page, the lot, and load it onto a website. People who want to buy the book pay for it, and it is then printed on demand - hence the name.
POD has a number of attractions for me. Firstly, I'm very familiar with computers, but not at all familiar with the printing industry, so it was in my comfort zone. Secondly, I don't have much storage at home. Thirdly, I probably don't have the time, energy, or salesman skills to shift a large number of physical copies. Fourthly, I wanted the book to be available in all English-speaking markets, without prohibitive postage costs.
POD does have some disadvantages. Perhaps the most important one is that the price per book will be higher - it won't benefit from the huge economies of scale that can apply for a large print run.
Ok - so I decided on POD. The next thing was to determine what POD company to use. The first one I investigated was Createspace.com - this is now a subsidiary of amazon.com, and therefore worth consideration by anyone. the reason I rejected it is that all distribution is from the USA - I'm based in England, and didn't want to lose the home market because of the aforementioned postage costs. At the time of writing, createspace say they have no plans for their books to be available through amazon.co.uk or other non-US subsidiaries.
So - lulu.com. They proclaim that they are the largest self-publishing company out there, and have a flourishing network of forums. I thought that this would be important since if I hit a problem, I'd like it if someone else had hit it before, and posted the answer. They also offered distribution internationally.

The decision to self-publish

Like a lot of aspiring writers, I had hoped that my book would be snapped up by a major publishing company, who would then bring their massive marketing budget to bear behind the book. Then I woke up. Like most people I'd read the stories of books languishing in publishers' slush piles - the name doesn't fill you with confidence, does it? And how much attention was my book - any book - going to get? I participated in various writers' websites, most notably the site www.authonomy.com, which is run by HarperCollins. The site was in beta starting in May 2008, and became public in September 2008. I was one of the authors who submitted my book, and I got a lot of valuable feedback.
I was even contacted by two people at HarperCollins. One was a person who worked in their marketing department, and who wanted to include my book, along with eleven others on the site, as an example of what Authonomy had to offer. I was happy to agree, reasoning that if HarperCollins were going to publish it, they wouldn't be telling other publishers about it. However, other publishers might have had a different view.
The second person was a senior editor, who gave some helpful advice, and some advice that I found difficult to accept. She wanted the book to be exclusively about the achievements and recognitions of those above a certain age. I felt that if I did that, it wouldn't be my book any more; it would be a different book.
In early 2009, HarperCollins announced that they would be publishing three books from Authonomy, and mine wasn't one of them. Well, I knew the statistics weren't in my favour. But two people from HarperCollins had looked at it, and even contacted me. but it didn't look like the were going to publish it.
So on the principle that if you want something doing, do it yourself, that's what I'm going to do.