Front matter & covers

What front matter is #

The pages a reader passes before the story starts: half title, title page, series page, copyright, dedication, epigraph, author's note, table of contents.

Each is a real page in the Front Matter tab with its own layout, and each can be included or left out of any export independently — a submission draft and a paperback rarely want the same set.

Page templates #

Rather than laying a page out from nothing, start from a template and adjust. Title pages come in classic centered, modern left-aligned and screenplay variants; there are templates for half title, series page, dedication, epigraph, copyright and author's note, plus framed, split and ornament-only layouts for anything else.

Templates set position and typography. The words are always yours.

Putting a page into the body of the book #

Any front matter page can go into the body rather than the front — a part title before an act, a full-bleed image between chapters, a different heading for the one chapter that needs it.

The buttons on an outline node are where this happens. + pg on a scene attaches a page ahead of that scene; + hd on a chapter replaces its heading. Everything the generator produces can be overridden this way, one place at a time, without abandoning it everywhere else.

A page set to element mode in its inspector flows in the body text column instead of taking a page of its own — useful for an ornament or a section marker that should not force a page break. Those are marked ELEMENT in the picker so you can tell the two apart before you choose.

How an inline page is measured #

A page placed in the body is not printed as a page: the manuscript clips it to the height of its own content and starts the prose immediately below. That is why the canvas draws a dashed line labelled Body text starts here on inline pages, with everything below it dimmed — the design canvas is a full page, but only the part above the line reaches the reader.

Block height in the canvas toolbar decides how that height is found. Auto measures the content. A fixed height in inches gives the band a box of its own instead, which is also what makes the anchor grid meaningful — a content-height band has no spare vertical space to anchor anything within, so the inspector falls back to horizontal alignment until you set one.

Tokens: text that keeps itself true #

Type {chapter-number}, {chapter-title} or {chapter-subtitle} into a text element and it resolves against the chapter the page is attached to. Rename or reorder that chapter and the heading follows, instead of quietly disagreeing with the book.

{book-title}, {author}, {series} and {year} work anywhere, which is what title and copyright pages want.

While you are not editing, the element shows the value so you can judge the design; click into it and it shows the token again, because that is what you are editing. A faint dotted underline marks resolved text in the editor only — it never appears in page view, export or print. A page that is not yet attached to a chapter previews against sample values, or against any chapter you pick in the Preview control, which is the way to check a design against the longest title in the book.

Bleed and Show bleed are different #

The bleed amount is a document setting in Project settings: extra artwork past the trim line that the printer needs, and it goes into the exported PDF. Show bleed on the front matter canvas is only a guide — it draws the trim line and dims the zone that will be cut away, so you can see what survives. Switching the guide off does not remove bleed from the book, and switching it on does not add any.

Covers #

An ebook cover is a single front panel. A print cover is a spread: back cover, spine and front, sized together, with the spine width following your page count and paper stock.

Dust jackets add inside flaps. Trim presets for the common print services set the dimensions for you.

Print-ready output #

Covers export as PDF/X-1a in CMYK, which is what a printer expects and what stops colors shifting between your screen and the press.

Bleed is handled for you, and artwork below print resolution is flagged before you export rather than after the proof arrives.