Even MORE Red Flags that Scream a Book Is Self-Published

Click here for Part I and here for Part II of this series, Red Flags that Scream a Book is Self-Published.

Part III: Front and Back Matter

When I started this series of articles about red flags, I thought… well, I didn’t think it would be a series. I figured one article, a list of about a dozen things, and Bob’s your uncle. Four thousand plus words later, I am realizing how daunting all this can be to a first-time self-publisher. My apologies. Don’t let all this freak you out. This last bit is more along the lines of helping you organize your book according to industry standards.

The Front Matter of Your Book

There’s a particular order to the front matter of books. Yes, you can switch it up a bit, but you do want to meet reader expectations. While certain parts are not set in stone, this is a good guide:

1. Half Title Page
2. Full Title Page
3. Copyright Page
4. Dedication Page
5. Table of Contents

The first thing a reader sees when they open a front cover is usually the title page with the title, author name, and publisher’s name. Sometimes the publisher (or author, if self-published) will have a few pages of blurbs with headings like, “Praise for TITLE OF BOOK” with famous or semi-famous people saying nice things about the book, and then the title page. Occasionally, an author bio is at the front. But by and large, the first page is usually the title page.

Copyright Page

Your front matter should always include the copyright page which includes the copyright, any disclaimers, and publisher and imprint details. Some authors or publishers will put in a line with contact information for bulk book orders or for people to request copyright/reprint permissions.

Copyright: Being too paranoid about people ripping off your book is a huge red flag. So many people are worried someone is going to steal their book. It does happen. Creating a big warning on your copyright page will not prevent this. Those “WARNINGS” make you look amateurish. I constantly see posts in Facebook groups from new authors worried someone is going to steal their book idea. Ideas are easy. Writing an entire book well is hard. If people are going to steal, they’re going to steal. Once you publish, you will be amazed by the speed at which your book shows up on pirate sites.

Don’t go overboard on threatening people who plagiarize or steal the book. Established authors all know that this happens and while we’re not happy about it and will defend our copyright, we understand the realities of publishing. A simple statement of copyright covers you. Termsfeed has examples of copyright notices if you need some inspiration.

Do you need a publisher or imprint name? No. (Wait for it.) But… yeah. The author’s name as the publisher is the giveaway that your book is self-published. Another red flag is when an imprint or publisher name is very book-specific or author-centric. If you have a corporate entity, you may want to use that as your publisher or imprint name. You might want to have a separate legal entity for your book business. That is between you and your accountant and lawyer.

The copyright page also includes the ISBN of your book. I always recommend that my clients buy their own ISBNs through Bowker (in the US). You need one ISBN for each format of your book: Print is one format, eBook is another, audio book is a third. If you are doing print and eBook (which I also recommend), you will need two ISBNs at $125 each. At that point, for another $50, you can get a bundle of ten ISBNs. They don’t go stale; they don’t expire. If you decide to do an audio book or write another book, you will have your ISBNs waiting for you.

Your Table of Contents

Your Table of Contents helps to market your book. Both your chapter titles and your subheads let your prospective readers know what is covered in the book. In nonfiction, people are looking for specific information, but they are also looking for a solution to some problem they have. Make sure your chapter titles and subheads showcase that the reader is going to get what they need out of this book. You want an interesting, benefits-driven Table of Contents. A simple listing of “features” gives people what you are offering; the benefits are what they will get out of it. Keep your readers’ desires in mind.

Back Matter

The back matter is, surprise, all the stuff that comes after the main content of the book is finished. Again, the order isn’t set in stone, but a traditional flow puts your book on a level with professionally published books. Your back matter can be as simple as an “About the Author” and Acknowledgements or it could contain Notes (footnotes/citations), Appendix, Index, Glossary, Credits for Illustrations, Other Works by the Author, and sometimes a speaker page or how to hire the author page (you see this more in business books).

DO make sure that any and all of these sections are pertinent and necessary, and not ways to pad out your book.

Your About the Author should be written in third person. There’s a formula to author bios. Follow that. Read the bios of authors who have been traditionally published. Someone at the publisher wrote that for them and they use a template or format for their author bios. Your author bio isn’t really a bio—it’s a short snapshot of your life as it pertains to your book. You don’t want to be too sentimental, needy, or to overshare.

Pricing

Another giveaway that a book is self-published is that the price is outside of the norm for the genre and page count. New authors either charge too much or too little. Some indie authors price all their books low. Usually, an author will set a lower price for the first in a series of books, and have the rest in the series be more in line with other books in the genre.

I have also seen new authors overprice their books. Recently, an author had the paperback of her memoir priced at $29.99. No one is going to spend $30 on a memoir by an unknown person. They might spend $30 on a paperback that solves a specific niche problem or an academic book. People will spend $30 for a hard cover copy of their favorite author’s latest novel. But $30 was overpriced for book format, genre, and author.

The best way to figure your pricing is to look at other books in your genre that have about the same page count as yours. You will easily be able to spot the traditionally published books: The prices for both print and eBook are high. While most indie authors price their eBooks around the $4.99 range, traditional publishers charge $7.99 to $9.99 (still keeping the book in the KDP “sweet spot” for 70% royalties.

Your paperback price is going to take competitor pricing into account along with the actual printing cost of your book. A color interior will increase the printing costs of your book. If you have one color image in the book, the entire interior of the book is considered color. Page count will also increase the printing costs of your book. Both KDP and IngramSpark (and most likely every other POD platform) have royalty calculators where you can type in the specifics of your book (page count, interior color or B&W, type of paper, trim size, etc.) and get a good print cost estimation and your royalty amount.

Books by well-known authors cost more. If you’re not famous (and famous is relative), in general, you should charge slightly less than what the name authors in your genre are charging. Play around with the pricing, but be aware of the going rates in your genre.

Perfection in Book Publishing Does Not Exist

Now, how do I know about all these publishing faux pas? Because I’ve made most of them.

My first print book was incredibly ugly. The cover was hideous, with no design—just title and author in large font. The text color didn’t work well with the background color. (That’s putting it nicely.) The interior looked almost as bad. The right margin wasn’t justified. There was, at least, a title page, a copyright page, and a table of contents. But the font was too large, the line spacing too wide, margins a bit too thin. The chapters started at the top of the page, instead of halfway down. I wrote my own foreword. (At least I spelled it right!) All in all, it was a self-published book that looked VERY self-published. Fortunately, I only printed a short run of books for family and friends—I never actually published the book publicly.

Today we have more and better tools at our disposal to create professional looking books. Take advantage of not just these tools, but the knowledge that is shared. Print-on-Demand platforms like KDP and IngramSpark. I advise people to hire out some of the steps to publishing. The two most important places to put your money are cover design and editing. You can format the interior of a book yourself using templates. You can ask beta readers for feedback. Most of these red flags are minor details that cost nothing to fix or avoid.

You are right to be proud that you have written a book. Now make sure the published book makes you every bit as proud.

Need help with publishing your book? I do that. Check out my Self-Publishing Services.