You may think you left citations behind when you finished writing college papers, but if you are writing non-fiction these little footprints of authority are more important than ever. In school, your references to others’ work is a matter of intellectual honesty and under Fair Use of the Copyright Act, attribution of the source is sufficient. When you are writing a book that will be published and sold, your work no longer falls under this clause since the purpose is for profit. The responsibility for proper citations and copyright permissions rests entirely upon the author. When do you need to use a citation when writing non-fiction? When you are using a direct quote When you are paraphrasing someone else’s idea or analysis When you are using data, statistics, or any other quantifiable ‘fact’ that can challenged or called into question When you want to strengthen a point or argument, and there is a more qualified figure who also speaks to that fact If you want to give readers more information that doesn’t fit into the flow of your writing (although that can also fall more under the purview of a note) There are many ways to deal with citing your sources depending on how you are writing your manuscript and what you are writing about. This isn’t academic writing – those messy MLA and APA parenthetical in-text citations probably won’t make an appearance in your book. Chances are, you will use footnotes or endnotes to house your conceptual credentials. The…

Front Matter is one of the last sections of a book manuscript for an author to complete. But it’s the first thing a reader sees. Before page 1, there are several items that appear in the front pages of any book. Some pages are mandatory: title, copyright, and table of contents. Others are optional, upon the discretion of the author and publisher. Every page before the first one in Chapter 1 is paginated using lower case roman numerals beginning with the Title Page is i. Except for the Copyright Page, all sections of the front matter begin on a recto page. Verso pages are those on the left hand side of an open book; recto pages are on the right. In the body of the book manuscript, every new chapter begins on a recto page. This means if your chapter ends on an odd-numbered page, you will have one blank page between the end of the chapter and the start of the next one. Because printed books are bound together in signatures – 32 pages constitutes a signature – the total number of book pages is always divisible by eight. This is why you often find blank pages or additional front matter at the beginning or end of a book. Title Page – [required] The title and author’s name and appears centered on the page. This is always the first printed page. Copyright Page – [required] This page contains copyright information (title, subtitle, author, publisher, date of publication, subject headings, Library…

Preparing a book proposal for submission to a publisher or an agent requires you write a Table of Contents (TOC). This should be an outline of the book concept you plan to propose. Simple enough? Simple is not the same as easy. To begin this document, start with a list of your chapters. Do you have chapter titles? Are the chapters divided into sections or parts? Translate the structure of your book into outline format. Include the (estimated) pagination of each chapter. How long is your book? Publishers have standard expectations of word counts for different genres. For memoir, 80-100,000 words or roughly 200 pages. For narrative non-fiction it may depend on the subject and scope of your book, but again 200-300 pages is a good range. Manuscripts longer than 300 pages may handicap their odds, since the cost of paper and printing is the biggest production expense; the longer the book, the lower the profit margin. In addition to the chapters, you will also have Front Matter and Back Matter and will want to indicate in your Table of Contents what you plan to include in each. Front Matter goes before Chapter 1, page 1 of the manuscript; Back Matter appears at the end of the book. Front Matter includes the title page, copyright page, dedication, epigraph, a Preface or Foreword, perhaps a Note to the Reader, Acknowledgements, Table of Contents, and/or Introduction. Other than title and copyright pages, what you decide to include in your Front Matter is…