Parts of a Book: Every Part of a Printed Book, Labelled

A printed book has two sets of parts: the physical ones on the outside (covers, spine, edges and endpapers) and the sections on the inside (front matter, body and back matter). Knowing what each one is called makes it much easier to brief a cover designer or formatter, read a printer's specification, or follow publishing advice. Below are both "diagrams", outside and inside, labelled in plain English, followed by the questions authors ask most.

Key takeaways#

• The outside of a book is its binding: front cover, back cover, spine, and on a hardback the boards, joints and hinges, endpapers and sometimes a dust jacket with flaps.
• The top of a book is the head, the bottom is the tail, and the open edge opposite the spine is the fore-edge.
• The inside has three main parts: front matter, body (the main text) and back matter.
• Right-hand pages are called recto and left-hand pages verso. Most opening pages and chapter one traditionally start on a recto.
• A paperback and a hardback share most of the same parts, but only a hardback has boards, endpapers and a dust jacket.

The outside of a book, labelled#

Picture a hardback lying closed on a desk, spine facing you. Working from the outside in, these are the parts you can see and touch:

1. 1Front cover. The face of the book: title, author name and the main artwork. It's the part that has to work as a thumbnail on Amazon.
2. 2Back cover. Usually carries the blurb, a short author line or review quotes, and the ISBN barcode, which normally sits in a lower corner.
3. 3Spine. The narrow strip where the pages are bound together. It's what shows when the book sits on a shelf, so it usually carries the title, author name and publisher or imprint logo. Its width depends on page count and paper, which is why you calculate the spine width before the cover is finished. On Amazon KDP, a paperback needs more than 79 pages to have text on the spine.
4. 4Head and tail. The head is the top edge of the book and the tail is the bottom edge. You'll also hear "head of the spine" and "tail of the spine".
5. 5Fore-edge. The edge opposite the spine, where the pages open.
6. 6Boards (hardback only). The stiff card panels that make a hardback's front and back covers.
7. 7Joint and hinge. Where the cover meets the spine, the book has to flex every time it's opened. Library and conservation glossaries call the outside of that flexing area the joint and the inside the hinge, though many people use "hinge" for both.
8. 8Headbands and tailbands. The small bands of thread or cloth that peek out at the top and bottom of a hardback's spine. On most modern hardbacks they're decorative.
9. 9Dust jacket and flaps. A removable paper wrapper around a hardback. Its front flap usually holds a summary of the book and its back flap an author photo and bio.

Open the front cover of a hardback and you meet the endpapers: a folded sheet at the front and back that joins the text block to the case. The half glued to the inside of the board is the pastedown, and the half you can turn is the free endpaper. Some books add extra blank leaves, called flyleaves, before the first printed page. Endpapers can be plain or patterned, and they're a nice place for a map or a design detail.

Inside all of that sits the text block: the printed pages, folded and bound together. When you open the book, the inner margin that runs down into the binding is the gutter.

Which of these your book has depends on the binding. Our guide to types of book binding covers perfect bound, case bound and saddle stitch, and hardcover vs paperback helps you choose between them. One practical note: Amazon KDP's hardcovers are case laminate, meaning the cover artwork is printed directly onto the boards, and they don't come with a dust jacket.

The inside of a book, labelled#

Inside, a book is divided into three parts that always run in the same order.

1. Front matter

Everything before the story or main text starts. In a typical print book that's the half title page, title page, copyright page, dedication, table of contents, and sometimes a foreword, preface or introduction. Amazon's own KDP guidance puts the half title and title pages on right-hand pages and the copyright page on the back of the title page.

We've covered each page, in order, with examples, in our guide to the front matter of a book, so we won't repeat it here.

2. Body

The main text. In most books that means chapters, sometimes grouped into parts with their own part-title pages. Some novels open with a prologue and close with an epilogue, which count as body rather than front or back matter. KDP's guidance is to start chapter one on a right-hand page.

The body has its own small parts, often called page furniture:

• Running heads. The line at the top of the page. By convention the author's name sits on left-hand pages and the book title on right-hand pages.
• Folios. The page numbers. They're usually left off blank pages and chapter openings.
• Margins and gutter. The white space around the text. The gutter needs to be wider than the outer margin in a thick book, so words don't disappear into the binding.
• Chapter openings. The styled first page of each chapter, often with a drop cap or extra space above the heading.

How all of this is set is the job of typesetting, and how it looks overall is interior book design.

3. Back matter

Everything after the main text ends. Depending on the book, that can include:

• Acknowledgements (these can go in the front matter instead)
• An afterword or author's note
• Appendices
• Notes or endnotes
• A glossary
• A bibliography or further reading list
• An index
• About the author
• Also by the same author, and a link or note pointing to the next book
• A colophon

A colophon is a short note about how the book was produced, such as the typeface, the printer or the paper. Few self-published books include one, but design-led books and small presses often do. Some publishers put this information on the copyright page instead.

Recto and verso: which side is which#

Two more words you'll meet in printer specs and formatting guides. Recto is a right-hand page and verso is a left-hand page. In a printed book, recto pages are always odd-numbered and verso pages even-numbered. When KDP says a section should start on a right-facing page, it means a recto, and sometimes that means leaving a blank verso before it. A blank page there isn't a mistake. It's how the layout keeps the opening pages where readers expect them.

Why the parts of a book matter when you self-publish#

When you publish through a traditional publisher, someone else handles all of this. When you self-publish, you're the one briefing the designer and approving the proof, so the vocabulary helps.

• Your cover is one file, not three. For print, the front cover, spine and back cover are designed as a single wrap, sized to your trim size and page count. If your page count changes after formatting, the spine width changes and the cover has to be adjusted.
• Your interior has rules. Recto starts, running heads and blank versos are what make a book look professionally made rather than printed from a Word file.
• The barcode needs a home. The back cover needs room for the ISBN barcode, so tell your designer early which ISBN you're using.

At HMD, our book cover design Print Ready package covers your ebook cover and the full paperback wrap (front, spine and back, with the ISBN barcode placed) for £297 ($377). For the inside, book formatting starts at £197 ($249) for up to 20,000 words, and we'll format your first chapter free so you can see it before you buy.