KDP Front Matter and Back Matter: What to Include and Where

Front matter and back matter are easy to think of as the pages that sit around the “real” book. In practice, they shape the first and last few minutes a reader spends with it, so they deserve a little more thought than simply copying whatever appeared in the last book you opened.

The useful question is what each page is there to do. A title page identifies the book. A table of contents helps the reader navigate it. Notes and references support the text. An author page or series page gives an interested reader somewhere useful to go next.

Print and Kindle need slightly different treatment too. Some familiar print conventions do not translate neatly to a reflowable eBook, while Kindle has its own rules around navigation and external links that become important once you start adding back matter.

This guide explains what normally belongs in KDP front matter and back matter, which elements are optional, how the order can change between formats, and what is worth checking before you publish.

What Counts as Front Matter?

Front matter is the preliminary material that appears before the main body of the book. It can be extremely short, or it can run to several pages in a complex nonfiction title.

KDP’s current print-formatting guidance gives a conventional sequence that can include a half title, title page, copyright page, reviews or praise, dedication, table of contents, preface, acknowledgments, prologue, and introduction.

That is a useful order to understand, but it is not a checklist every self-published book has to complete. A short novel may need very little. A technical nonfiction book may genuinely benefit from a contents page, list of figures, preface, and other navigational material.

Which Front-Matter Pages Do You Actually Need?

KDP’s eBook formatting guidance says your eBook should include a title page containing the book title and author name. A subtitle can be included when the book has one.

The copyright page is common and useful, but KDP’s eBook instructions present it as optional rather than as a universal requirement. If you include one, keep it accurate and proportionate to the book rather than filling it with boilerplate simply because another title did.

An ISBN is not something every copyright page needs to list for every format. Kindle eBooks do not require an ISBN, while print editions can use an ISBN supplied by KDP or one obtained elsewhere. If you do include identifiers on the page, make sure they belong to the edition the reader is holding.

The same restraint applies to legal language. A generic paragraph copied from another book is not automatically useful protection. If the subject involves legal, medical, financial, or other professional advice, the disclaimer may need specialist review rather than a stock sentence taken from a template.

Should Kindle and Print Front Matter Be the Same?

They can begin from the same manuscript, but they do not have to be identical.

For example, a print half-title normally sits on a right-facing page. That physical page-spread convention does not have the same meaning in a reflowable Kindle book, where the reader may be using a phone, tablet, or e-reader at a completely different text size.

The table of contents changes too. Kindle books require logical navigation, and Amazon strongly recommends a visible clickable TOC for books that benefit from one. A print TOC uses fixed page numbers instead. The KDP table of contents guide covers that distinction in detail.

It is also worth keeping promotional material out of the opening simply because there happens to be room for it. Amazon’s Kindle quality guidance specifically warns against front-loading bonus content before the primary content.

Acknowledgments are a good example of an element that can move. They often appear in traditional print front matter, but Kindle Create also supports acknowledgments as back matter. If moving them to the end gives your eBook a cleaner opening, that can be a perfectly sensible choice.

Dedications, Epigraphs, Prefaces, and Acknowledgments

These pages give the book character and context, but they do not all perform the same job.

A dedication is usually brief and personal. In print it commonly occupies its own page, and KDP’s print guidance places it on a right-facing page. In a reflowable eBook, keep it as a distinct front-matter section rather than trying to guarantee that it will always occupy exactly one physical screen.

An epigraph is a quotation placed before the book or a section of it. This is one area where a short quotation is not automatically a safe quotation. The U.S. Copyright Office states that there is no fixed number of words or percentage that guarantees fair use, and even a small extract can matter if it represents an important part of the original work.

Copyright duration also varies by work and jurisdiction. In the United States, current Copyright Office guidance confirms that works published in the United States before January 1, 1931 are now in the public domain, but that should not be turned into a universal rule about every older work published anywhere in the world.

A foreword is usually written by someone other than the author and introduces the book or its significance. A preface is normally the author’s own explanation of the background, purpose, or circumstances behind the book. An introduction generally begins the subject itself.

Acknowledgments can sit at the front or back depending on the book and format. Long acknowledgments often work particularly well at the back because readers can begin the main text sooner without losing anything important.

What Belongs in KDP Back Matter?

Back matter starts once the main text has finished. It is sometimes discussed as though its only job were selling the reader another book, but that is too narrow. In nonfiction especially, the most important back-matter pages may be references, notes, appendices, a glossary, bibliography, or other material that supports the book the reader has just finished.

Kindle Create currently includes dedicated back-matter options for epilogues, afterwords, acknowledgments, About the Author pages, Books in This Series, Books by Author, and other custom pages. That makes it easy to keep these elements structurally separate rather than treating them as an extension of the final chapter.

Can You Ask Readers for an Amazon Review?

Yes. Amazon’s Community Guidelines allow readers to be encouraged to leave an honest, unbiased, unincentivized review.

Keep the request short. A reader who has just finished the book does not need a sales pitch, and there is no benefit in making the page more complicated than the action itself.

Avoid asking specifically for a positive, five-star, or favorable review. Do not offer a bonus, gift, discount, refund, entry into a promotion, or access to extra material in exchange for reviewing the book. The review needs to remain voluntary and uninfluenced.

The Amazon book reviews guide covers the wider review strategy and the difference between a legitimate request and an incentivized one.

Series Links, Author Bios, and Newsletter Sign-Ups

If the reader reaches the final page and wants more, back matter is a natural place to help them find it.

Books in a series

Amazon’s Kindle hyperlink guidance explicitly allows links to previous or subsequent books in a series, and Kindle Create includes dedicated Books in This Series and Books by Author pages that can contain Amazon links.

For a series, give the next book the most useful position. A title, short description, and clear link are usually enough. Avoid turning the final pages into a catalog of covers and sales copy if the reader only needs to know what comes next.

For a larger backlist, an “Also by” or “Books by” page can group titles by series so readers can find the right starting point quickly.

Author bio

The author bio can be warmer than the formal biography used for press releases or conference programs. First person or third person can work, depending on the author’s voice and the type of book.

Keep it focused on what a reader is likely to care about: what you write, a little relevant background, and perhaps one or two personal details if you are comfortable sharing them. There is no need to include your location or other personal information simply because another author’s bio does.

Newsletter sign-up

This is where print and Kindle need particularly careful separation.

Do not use a QR code inside the Kindle edition as a workaround for that restriction either. If you want to include external links in an eBook, Amazon says they should directly enhance the reader experience and must comply with its current hyperlink rules.

Print is different. A printed URL or QR code can direct readers to an appropriate author resource or signup page, subject to the laws and privacy requirements that apply to your mailing list. Keep the destination clear and make sure the link will still be useful months or years after the book is printed.

The author email list guide covers list-building separately. For the KDP file itself, the important point is not to carry a print newsletter tactic into Kindle without checking Amazon’s link rules.

Final Front- and Back-Matter Check

Front and back matter often contain very little prose compared with the main manuscript, which makes mistakes surprisingly easy to miss. A wrong ISBN, broken link, old book title, missing chapter in the TOC, or outdated series page can survive several editing passes simply because nobody reads these pages in sequence.

Then preview the actual outputs. Kindle Previewer lets you check navigation, front-matter flow, links, and reflow. For print, KDP Print Previewer and a physical proof let you see page sides, blank pages, numbering, contents pages, and the transition from front matter into the main text.

Frequently Asked Questions

What to Do Next

Work through the book from the outside in. Decide which front-matter pages genuinely help the reader, check that the main manuscript begins cleanly, and then choose the back matter that supports the book or gives the reader a useful next step.

After that, separate the print and Kindle versions. Fix the print page order and pagination in the final PDF, test the Kindle navigation and links in the converted eBook, and remove anything that only made sense in the other format.

The result does not need to be elaborate. It just needs to feel deliberate from the title page to the final page.