What
are the various book elements?
These quick notes are design to ease
the entry of your manuscript into our editorial and production
processes, and discusss the various book elements
and parts of a book. Our processes are designed
around the standards of the publishing industry, and your review
of the material below will ensure your publishing project flows
as smoothly as possible.
All manuscripts should be delivered
to Dog Ear electronically - either via email or on a CD/DVD. Your
Editorial Manager will give you the email address to which to
send your manuscript. All of your book elements / parts of your
book should be in one single file.
PLEASE NOTE - follow
our manuscript formatting guidelines here.
ALL parts of the interior of your book
should be in ONE MS Word file. Please do NOT
submit multiple files for the interior of your book. ALL
of the parts of the book should be combined into your
manuscript file.
Book Elements (also called Manuscript
Elements and Parts of a Book)
Book Elements - Order of the
Parts of a Book -
You may most certainly set the order
of elements within your book - but there are standards for professional
books and textbooks that are accepted within the industry. "Nontextual"
material (those standard elements found in most books) should
be in the following order:
Front Matter
(occurring prior to the core content of the book)
Front matter is the first part
of a book and is the part of a book that outlines the 'technical
details'. The front matter pages are numbered in lowercase roman
numerals. Even though all of the pages in the front matter 'count',
no page number is placed on either display pages (such as Title
or Copyright pages), or blank pages.
Here are the typical parts of
a book's frontmatter:
- Title page
- Copyright page
- Copyright Acknowledgments (for titles with reprinted / permissioned
material)
- Dedication (if included)
- Brief Table of Contents (if included)
- Table of Contents
- Foreword (if included - usually written by someone other than
the author)
- Preface (if included - by the author)
- Acknowledgments (if included)
- Introduction (if included)
Body Matter (the
core content of the book)
- Parts / Sections / Chapters - in that order
End Matter (optional
materials at the back of the book)
-Glossary (if included)
-Bibliography (if included)
- Index (if included)
Notes on book elements -
Table of Contents-
A Table of Contents is critical in successfully producing your
manuscript - it is essentially the book element that is the the
'road-map' for your reader. Upon completion of your 'core' manuscript
content, please prepare a Table of Contents (TOC) listing each
part, section, chapter, and headings that you feel are appropriate.
Most non-fiction books and textbooks list at least the primary
heads in each chapter (called "A-Heads" or "1-Heads").
Your manuscript must match the order, context, and titles of the
TOC.
Front Matter
All books include the part of a book called "front matter."
Front matter is comprised of at least a Title Page, Copyright
Page, and a Table of Contents. Your Title Page will show the full
title of the book with subtitle, your name and any affiliations
you want us to list.
Text
Parts, Sections, and Chapters are the book elements that break
up the text by topic. Your Chapters should be divided into various
levels of headings - usually not more than 2 or 3 levels deep.
Chapters that contain similar content are 'chunked' together in
Sections or Parts. A Section is a set of Chapters that are related
closely, and Parts are Sections that are related. When organizing
your manuscript, think of it as a loose outline of your content
and the order in which you want your readers to progress through
the book.
End Matter
Some books contain End Matter like a Glossary, Bibliography, and
Index. These elements sent as part of your full manuscript. Dog
Ear can discuss a variety of options for creating an index for
your book.
Additional Manuscript Preparation notes
-
Your manuscript must be your final
manuscript. Editorial changes or alterations - other than to correct
errors - will significantly slow the process and will incur a
charge to the author.
Art, Images, Figures,
Graphs, Tables, etc -
"Non-text" elements will be placed as close as possible
to where they are referenced within the text (your Art Reference).
These elements will fall AFTER the reference, at the top or bottom
of a page, typically within (1) page of the Art Reference. Tables
are considered text and will be positioned within the text. Images
will appear in the printed book as submitted (both in size and
quality). Graphs or figures should use text printed as solid black
and white with no shading. Shading causes images to lose quality
when books are printed digitally. Art or images that require manipulation
will increase our production time and costs to the author. All
"non-text" elements should be numbered consecutively
and must be referenced within the text..
A note on photographic elements
Photos reproduce best when submitted as an original digital file
in high resolution. Any scans should be submitted at 300 dpi as
black and white.
Book Elements and MS Word Styles
Microsoft Word is very good at creating
'styles' that help our production department understand each of
the parts of a book. This usually is centered around the various
book elements that have to do with the parts of the book within
the main text - things like chapter titles, heads, sub-heads and
the various text elements.
Your Editorial Manager can supply
a MS Word template with the following styles embedded:
1-Head: The 1st level
of head within text
Article Title: Refers to titles of articles only,
not chapter titles
Author: Original author(s) of article, if any
2-Head: 2nd level of head within text, usually
denotes a subhead
Boxed Text: One way of highlighting a phrase/quote
BL: Bulleted list
3- Head: 3rd level of head in text, usually a
sub of a subhead
CN: Chapter numbers
CT: Chapters titles
4-Head: 4th level of head in text, usually is
a bold title at the start of a paragraph
Intro: Introduction paragraph to either an article
or the chapter
Notes: Includes footnotes and endnotes
NL: Numbered list
Quote: Quotes from people
Ref: Usually bibliographic references at the
end of chapters/articles
Table Head: Usually title of table
Table Source: Permissionable source of table
Table Subhead: Usually headings over table columns
Table Text: Text to be indented in tables
Body Text: All text within document |
