Book Synthesis: Page Numbers

Summer vacation is over!  The kids are back in school and Halloween is right around the corner (again), so let’s get back to the basics with our Book Synthesis feature.  We spent our summer with guest authors talking about the first page of your chapters and whether or not your book should have a prologue.  We also talked about vacation spots to draw inspiration from and text justification. We’re going to spend October and November talking about those dreaded headers and footers.  This month we’ll discuss page numbers in the footer, and in November we’ll talk about the title of your book and your name in the header.

Headers and footers are part of your book which can sure throw up a red flag that you are a self-published amateur if you don’t pay attention to them.  It’s very easy to mess them up.  I’m no expert myself, and my second book suffered from a careless mistake with page numbering because I myself didn’t do my homework or get assistance when formatting my text.  There’s a lot of debate on the review blogs and self-publishing sites about page numbering, and there are several options in your favor.  For the sake of this article, we’ll go with the simpler side which leans more toward a universal format, that being a page number centered at the bottom of the page in the footer.  Some people prefer them to be in the header (the top of the page), and if you do too that’s fine.  Just keep the page numbers justified to the outer margins (both on the left and right) and make sure there is distinction between them and the author/title (often justified to the inside margins closest to the gutter or centered).

START AT THE BEGINNING

And by the beginning, I mean page 1.  First, none of your front matter should have a page number.  If you start your book with a blank page, a soft title page, a copyright page, a dedication page, a table of contents, that entire group of pages we’ve discussed so far this year that make up the front of your book, NONE of them should have a page number!!  Your page numbers should not start until the first page of your novel – chapter 1. That being said, the first page of your body of text usually does not have a page number either.  Meaning that while it is PAGE 1 of your novel, most authors do not put the actual number on that page.  Turn the page and the number starts on page 2.  This can be achieved very easily in Microsoft Word by clicking on “Insert” in your task bar and choosing “Page Numbers.”  You should see a check box that will eliminate the page number on the first page.

That being said, there is much debate on whether or not you should start at #1.  Some authors include the front matter in the physical count of pages.  Most front matter averages about four pages.  Front and back, that’s eight pages which means the first page of your novel would actually be page 9 in your book if you are counting right from the beginning.  If you skip putting a page number on this first page, that means that your next page would start at page 10.  I’ve seen several traditionally published books include the front matter in the page count, and several that start numbering at the first page of the story.  So, it appears either is fine.  I’ve also noticed that more books today do NOT include a page number on the first page of the first chapter, but books printed in the 70s and 80s (and some in the early 90s) do include a ’1′ on the very first page.  If you use a blank page at the end of a chapter to justify the next chapter always starting on the right side, this blank page should never have a number on it; it should always be completely blank.  That being said, this is when page number starts getting tricky.

To control the page numbers so that they don’t appear in your front matter, or on blank pages and the first pages of each chapter, you must now think of your book as if it was divided into sections.  The first section is your front matter. Go to the last page of your front matter and click at the end of that page.  Then, from your Word toolbar click on “Insert.”  Choose “Next Page.”  Your cursor will move to the next page. Now go back and click on “View” and choose “Headers and Footers.”  Notice that your front matter has now been labeled Section 1 and the page you are now on (the first page of your first chapter) is labeled Section 2.  Now, go to the end of this first page and repeat these steps again.  That single first page is now it’s on section. Now that you are in Section 2 (the 2nd page of the first chapter) click on “View” again and notice that a toolbar pops up that looks like this:

You’ll want to uncheck the link-to-previous tab in this toolbar which is the 5th tab from the right.  This will prevent your header and footer (page number) from appearing on Section 2, that first page of chapter 1. Now, you can click on “Insert” and choose “Page Numbers” while you are in Section 3 (the 2nd page of Chapter 1).  Be sure to include “show number on first page.”  That’s the page you are on. And choose the location where you want the number to appear.  I prefer centered.

Now, guess what?  When you get to the last page of Chapter 1, you will repeat these steps all over again to ensure no page number or header appears on the first page of Chapter 2 and so on. Sounds time consuming and annoying and complicated, right?  Well, yes, yes, and no.  Once you get the hang of creating these section breaks, the rest just falls into place and becomes second nature.

Check out this article at Instant Publisher for more information and some useful pictures, where the above pics came from.

Just be sure to remain consistent and that your page numbers fall in numerical order, even when there isn’t a page number shown on that page.

I’ve recently learned to use the Zoom feature in Word (thank you, Cheryl!) to zoom out and look at more than one page at a time.  I usually like to look at 4 pages at a time and it helps you to be consistent. Just click on “View” in the toolbar and then choose “Zoom.”  From here, if you change it to 75% you should see 4 pages on your screen at one time, but can adjust it to view more if you like.  Give it a try and I’m sure you’ll see that it definitely helps.

To recap:

• Do not number the pages of your front matter.
• A number on the first page of Chapter 1 is optional.
• The first page of Chapter 1 can start at #1 if you like, or can include the pages of your front matter.
• Most books these days do not number the first page of chapters.
• Create sections to be able to control whether or not a page number appears on the first page of a chapter.
• Be consistent and make sure your pages fall in numerical order (even when they aren’t visible).