Oops, Did You Add These Essential Sections to Your Book Before Your Edit?
Only if you want to write a commercial-quality nonfiction book
First-time authors often don’t know about the various sections of a book they need to write. So before you hand off your manuscript — the one you have written, rewritten, rewritten again, revised, and polished — make sure all relevant sections are included so your editor can edit your words as a body of work, with no lingering “to come” notations.
Here are some parts of a book you may not know you needed (or don’t need), and this is the order in which the sections usually appear:
Praise Pages
People like to say nice things about your book. You just have to ask them. We call these blurbs or endorsements or testimonials. You see these on the front cover, like this one from my coauthored book Farewell from a well-respected physician who is recognized by his name alone:
“Every human deserves dignity and peace in the final chapter of life … a must-read book that could help those caring for the terminally ill.”
— Deepak Chopra, MD
You see these blurbs on the back covers too. And when you can get somebody who is well known to say something about you or your book…
