Links in an ebook, and where they should point
A reader finishes your paperback at midnight and thinks, I want the next one. Then they have to remember that in the morning, find the store, search your name, and get it right. Most of them do not.
A reader finishes your ebook at midnight and taps. That is the whole difference, and it is the one thing the ebook edition has that print does not. Most authors spend it on nothing.
Links the book needs to work
These are not marketing. They are how the file functions.
- The table of contents. In an ebook the contents page is navigation, not decoration. It has to be a real navigation document generated from the real chapter structure, pointing at where chapters actually begin — not a page of styled lines you typed. Every book needs one, including novels that would correctly ship without one in print. Does your book need a table of contents? covers why the two editions differ.
- Notes, and the way back. A note marker links to the note, and the note links back to the exact place the reader left. Half-built notes — down but not back — strand the reader at the end of the book with no way home but scrolling.
- Cross-references. "See page 42" means nothing in a file with no pages. Rewrite it as a link to the place: the chapter, the section, the figure. If it refers to a thing, link to the thing.
- The back matter. Everything after the last line of the story should be reachable and should reach outward. This is the part almost nobody builds properly.
Links the book should have and usually does not
The back of an ebook is the most valuable unused space you own, and The back of the book is where your next sale is makes the case at length. Four links earn their place:
The next book. Not a list of your works — the specific next thing this reader should read, named, with a cover image and a line about it, linked. If the book is in a series, that is book two. If it is a standalone, it is the one closest in tone.
The newsletter. The only audience you own outright. A store can change its rules or its algorithm overnight; an email list is yours. One line explaining what subscribers get, one link.
A review link. A reader who just finished is the likeliest reviewer you will ever have, and the ask has to arrive at exactly that moment. Keep it short and keep it honest — ask for a review, not a good one. Getting early reviews without breaking a rule covers what the stores allow.
Your site. One stable address that survives every other change. Books move between stores, prices change, series get repackaged; a domain you control does not.
In the Interior Formatter. It builds front and back matter from fields rather than leaving you to hand-set it, and generates the contents from your real chapter structure — so the navigation in the EPUB is structural, and the back-matter page is the same page in both editions. Start a book → · about the Interior Formatter
The retailer problem
Here is where authors get into trouble without meaning to.
Your ebook is sold in a shop. Linking from inside it to a competing shop is, at several stores, restricted or forbidden outright, and the rules vary by store and change without much notice. Check the guidelines of every store you sell through, because you cannot assume that what one permits another does.
There is a simple way to stop worrying about it: never hard-code a retailer. Point every outbound link at a neutral page you control — your own site — and let that page route the reader onward. One destination in the file, one place to update when a book moves, and nothing in the book that names a competitor.
The review ask is the clearest case. A review should go to the store the reader actually bought from, and you have no way to know which one that is from inside the file. A single link to your own review page, offering the stores you are on, sends every reader to the right place. A hard-coded link to one retailer sends most of your readers to a shop where they cannot leave a review at all, and may not be permitted in the file to begin with.
The craft of it
Say where the link goes. "Click here" tells the reader nothing and tells assistive technology less — someone scanning a book's links by voice hears a row of identical words. Write the destination into the text: join the newsletter, read the first chapter of Book Two, leave a review.
Write links that survive print. The same back matter is set in the paperback, where nothing is clickable and a raw URL is a string of characters someone has to copy by hand. So keep the address short, memorable and typeable, and phrase the sentence so it still reads when the link is just words on paper: "The newsletter is at example.com/news" works in both. "Click here to subscribe" works in neither.
Keep the number small. Four or five outbound links in the back matter read as a considerate author. Twenty read as an advertisement, and readers say so in reviews. Every link you add lowers the value of the others.
Check every one before you publish. Dead links are a routine reason a file is flagged or rejected in validation, and a broken internal link — a note pointing at nothing, a contents entry pointing at a chapter that moved — is an outright error in the checker's eyes. Follow each link in the finished file. Then follow them again after you change a chapter, because the internal ones move with the text. What makes an EPUB pass validation has the rest of what the checker looks for.
Make yours
Everything here is built into the tools, and they are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Back to: Fixed layout: when the page is the design · More: The back of the book is where your next sale is · What makes an EPUB pass validation · Launch week, without the panic