Which back-matter pages should I include?
Back matter is your chance to turn a finished reader into a repeat one. It's the most under-used real estate in a self-published book, and it costs a few pages.
The four that earn their place in almost every book
- A review request — a short, friendly ask. Reviews drive sales more than almost anything else you can do from inside the book.
- Acknowledgments.
- "Also by this author" — your other titles, so a reader who just finished can buy the next one immediately.
- Author bio, with a newsletter or website link. The link is the best way to reach that reader again directly.
The tool builds all four, and puts them in that conventional order.
The rest of the catalog
Depending on the book, you can also add:
- Afterword — a closing piece, often about what happened next or how the book landed.
- Author's note — where the history ends and the invention begins. Near-obligatory in historical fiction.
- Book-club questions — worth real money in book-club fiction and almost nothing elsewhere.
- Sneak peek at the next book — the first chapter of the sequel. The strongest sales page in the whole book if you have one to offer.
- Appendix, glossary, bibliography or further reading — for nonfiction, fantasy with invented terminology, and anything a reader will want to look things up in.
- Colophon — a short note on the typeface and how the book was made. Pure tradition, and it always prints last.
And anything else
If your book needs a page nobody thought to name, add a page of your own — see How do I add a page that isn't on the list?
What order?
You don't set it. Each page knows where it belongs, so they come out in the conventional sequence no matter what order you fill them in — and the colophon stays last.