Parts of a Book

Producing a professional page layout design is critical to the success of your book. A proper book layout is the result of careful planning, and attention to detail. Choosing the proper page size, font styles, line spacing, and margin settings, are a large part of a book layout, but gaining an understanding of the different parts of a book is where we should start. 

FRONT MATTER – A book is divided into three distinct parts. The first part of a book is known as the front matter. The front matter contains pages normally found in every book such as the title or cover page, copyright page, dedication page and table of contents. These pages are left unnumbered or if necessary, numbered using roman numerals rather than the more common Arabic numbering. Along with the more common pages are several lesser-known pages such as the Epigraph Page, Foreword and Frontispiece.

CORE MATTER – The second part of a book is known as the core matter. The core matter is also referred to as the body of the text. When developing a book layout, these are the pages that require most of the attention regarding choosing font styles, font size, margin settings, and so on.

BACK MATTER – The third part of a book is known as the back matter. The back matter contains several lesser-known pages such as the Epilogue, Afterword, and Glossary. The back matter pages are numbered along with the core matter pages using the Arabic numbering rather than the roman numerals used in the front matter. Many books are produced which do not contain any of the back matter pages.