Open any professionally published book and you'll find several pages before the story even begins—the title page, the copyright notice, perhaps a dedication or an evocative quotation. This is front matter: everything that comes before your first chapter. It's easy to overlook while you're focused on the writing, but it's a big part of what makes a finished book feel finished. Front matter sets the stage for your reader and signals that your work has been put together with care.
Author's Forge gives you a dedicated home for each of these pages, with templates so you're never staring at a blank screen wondering what a copyright page is supposed to say.
Available Front Matter Types
Title Page — The face of your book. Displays your title, author name, and optionally publisher information. This is the first thing readers see after the cover.
Copyright Page — Legal information: copyright year, holder, ISBN, rights statement, and any additional credits. Even if you're self-publishing, a proper copyright page lends your book legitimacy and asserts your rights to the work.
Table of Contents — Can be auto-generated or customized. You control the depth level and whether to include chapter numbers. In an ebook, the table of contents doubles as navigation, so readers can jump straight to any chapter.
Dedication — A short tribute to someone special. Keep it brief and heartfelt; a single line is often the most powerful.
Epigraph — A quotation or extract that sets the tone for your book. Include the attribution. A well-chosen epigraph can hint at your themes before the reader has read a single word of the story.
Acknowledgments — Thank the people who helped bring your book to life. Can also go in back matter—placement is a matter of preference, with fiction often saving them for the end and non-fiction sometimes placing them up front.
Prologue, Foreword, Preface, Introduction — Fuller sections that introduce your work in different ways:
- Prologue: Part of the story, often a teaser or backstory
- Foreword: Written by someone other than the author
- Preface: Author's statement about the book's creation
- Introduction: Sets context, especially for non-fiction
These four are often confused, so it's worth keeping the distinction straight: a prologue belongs to the story itself, while a foreword, preface, and introduction stand outside it—written by a guest, by you about the book, or to frame the material that follows.
Adding Front Matter
Right-click on the Front Matter folder in your book, then choose the type you want to add. Each type has its own template to get you started, so you can fill in the blanks rather than build the page from scratch.
How Much Do You Need?
Not every book needs every type. A minimal, perfectly professional setup is just a title page and a copyright page. From there, add only what serves your book: a dedication if someone earned it, an epigraph if you have the perfect quote, a preface if readers will benefit from knowing how the book came to be. Front matter appears in your exported book in the order it's listed in the sidebar, so you can drag the pieces into exactly the sequence you want.