Copyright page necessary?

[rewyn]

I believe I posted my question in the incorrect place:

We recently discussed within our organization the validity of the copyright page (and Title page for that matter.)

Is it even necessary to have in the ePub? Can it be moved to the back of the book?

What are others doing? Is there a industry standard?

[Jellby]

Necessary? No.

But I appreciate a title page with title, author, translator, date, illustrator, etc. The lengthy legalese copyright, publisher self-praise and advertisement, library-of-whatever classification, etc., I can live without.

[PandathePanda]

I know there is a few publisher (harpercollins & harlequins to name 2) that place their credit/copyright page at the back of the ebook.

Title page & cover page, I've yet to see one not at the front.

[Notjohn]

I always put the copyright statement at the back of the book, and as Panda points out, an increasing number of mainstream publishers are doing the same.

I recently looked at the epub of Tom Wolfe's Back in the Blood and was astonished to see that the TOC was banished to the back! That was I think a 2012 release.

[dgatwood]

For fiction books, I don't put the TOC into the flow at all. If somebody wants to pull up a TOC through a reader-specific UI, great, but IMO, it isn't of much value in a fiction book, so I don't feel the need to draw attention to it.

I do include the other standard pages, though—teaser, title/verso (copyright), and "reviews". Of course, the "reviews" for my books are basically spoofs, e.g.

I've never been bowled over so much by a book before.
—Victim, great book avalanche of 2023

so it isn't quite as egregious as it would be if I put actual reviews at the front of the book. If anything, they're the opposite of self-praise.

[Notjohn]

I'm a great believer in an actual (html) TOC at the front of the book. When I began putting my out-of-print books on Amazon's Kindle platform, I realized that what I should be doing is give the chapters an enticing title, so that someone seeing the downloadable (and later online) previews would get a sense of all the glorious things to come. Same is true of most of the other platforms, of which the most important for me is Barnes & Noble, whose system is very similar.

[BryanK]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

I'm a great believer in an actual (html) TOC at the front of the book. When I began putting my out-of-print books on Amazon's Kindle platform, I realized that what I should be doing is give the chapters an enticing title, so that someone seeing the downloadable (and later online) previews would get a sense of all the glorious things to come. Same is true of most of the other platforms, of which the most important for me is Barnes & Noble, whose system is very similar.

Perhaps you can help me understand the allure of an HTML TOC. Granted, my view may be a bit skewed because currently my only e-reader is a Kobo Wifi which has no capability to follow links of any kind, but I do have e-book apps on various other electronic devices and have never been tempted to use the HTML TOC.

First, how do you actually use the HTML TOC? From my perspective, the best feature of the HTML TOC is that once you get there, you can then skip the rest of it and get on with actually reading. But then I can do that anyway using the reader UI and the toc.nxc.

After you've begun reading, how do you access the HTML TOC? Do you navigate back to wherever the TOC is, the third chapter (using the reader UI) or page 14 (using the reader UI), or do you specially bookmark the TOC in every book? It seems more convenient to me to be able to access the TOC directly from wherever I am in the book.

Second, if you include an HTML TOC for the sole purpose of giving potential buyers who are reading the preview a look at the chapters not included in the preview, what is its benefit after they have made the purchase? From my perspective this is a marketing tool that gets in the way of the product's actual use.

It seems far more logical to me to include a section in the preview (that does not appear in the purchased e-book) for "Other Chapters", or to simply add a list of chapters to the book description in the online store. Something that does its job when you need it to and goes away when it's no longer useful.

Incidentally, I went to Amazon to find a representative e-book with a preview and HTML TOC and clicked on the #1 book under "Best Books of the Month". I got this:
The Girl on the Train: A Novel
This is a good argument that at least some HTML TOC's should not exist. At least with the toc.ncx my reader will number that mess so I can tell it to go to "17. Rachel" instead of "7. Rachel" or "13. Rachel". But insisting that an HTML TOC should appear at the beginning of all books means that things like this are inevitable.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by BryanK

Perhaps you can help me understand the allure of an HTML TOC.

It allows you to show the structure with multi-level nesting, while many readers don't support (or don't display properly) many levels in the NCX. And this is useful for some fiction too: books may have volumes, parts, chapters, and additional material like maps, family trees.

It allows to have additional information in the TOC. It's not uncommon for printed books to have a short summary of each chapter in the TOC, you can't have it in the NCX. Some books are compilations of stories by different authors, you may want to show the author's name and original publication data (for instance) in the TOC.

It can be fancifully formatted, with different fonts, colors, alignments, even illustrations. None of this in the NCX.

Of course, many books don't need an inline TOC at all and can be left with the NCX, but some of them may benefit from an inline TOC for the above reasons. In that case, I add an entry in the NCX pointing to the inline TOC, for quick access, if desired.

[PandathePanda]

My personal view is that HTML TOC is very useful in Non-Fiction ebooks. In Fiction think their use isn't that critical, like Jellby said in compilations it's useful, but in a book like Harry Potter and ... (or any Single Story book) it isn't in my view. Personally when I create an ebook for myself or a friend, I only use HTML TOC only for non-fiction, Stories I only use NCX TOC.

[BryanK]

Originally Posted by Jellby

It allows you to show the structure with multi-level nesting, while many readers don't support (or don't display properly) many levels in the NCX. And this is useful for some fiction too: books may have volumes, parts, chapters, and additional material like maps, family trees.

Yes, readers do multi-level TOCs very poorly. But doesn't this just perpetuate the problem? If e-books just work around the problem, there's no motivation for them to fix anything.

It allows to have additional information in the TOC. It's not uncommon for printed books to have a short summary of each chapter in the TOC, you can't have it in the NCX. Some books are compilations of stories by different authors, you may want to show the author's name and original publication data (for instance) in the TOC.

Now this I can see.

It can be fancifully formatted, with different fonts, colors, alignments, even illustrations. None of this in the NCX.

Not my cup of tea, but you're right, unsupported.

Of course, many books don't need an inline TOC at all and can be left with the NCX, but some of them may benefit from an inline TOC for the above reasons. In that case, I add an entry in the NCX pointing to the inline TOC, for quick access, if desired.

Agreed. To paraphrase my previous post, if it's doing something useful, keep it in. If it's not, and you're blindly adding an HTML TOC to every book, you're not doing your readers any favors.

[BryanK]

Originally Posted by PandathePanda

My personal view is that HTML TOC is very useful in Non-Fiction ebooks. In Fiction think their use isn't that critical, like Jellby said in compilations it's useful, but in a book like Harry Potter and ... (or any Single Story book) it isn't in my view. Personally when I create an ebook for myself or a friend, I only use HTML TOC only for non-fiction, Stories I only use NCX TOC.

I read most of my technical books on a computer, and Calibre handles the ncx.toc very well. It's right there on the sidebar and I don't have to scroll back up to the beginning of the book to get to it, so I haven't really seen any use for the HTML TOC so far.

[DaleDe]

Some conversions to other formats do not use the NCX file so in those cases an inline TOC can be useful, particularly if you are working off a single source.

Dale

[Notjohn]

I use the actual TOC in my Kindle K3 keyboard. I use the virtual (NCX) TOC when reading on my Fire.

Yes, it's almost entirely a sales tool for Amazon's Look Inside feature. But most books open at Chapter One, skipping the title page and TOC -- and the prologue and preface and introduction, if there are such! -- so there's no possible disadvantage to the reader.

Finally, there are traditionalists, who expect e-books to look like print editions. I am one: when I see Chapter One, I always skip back to the beginning to see the title page and any other preliminaries. I want to see a TOC. I want to see justified text. I want to see indented paragraphs and no weird spacing between paras. I want to see a traditional typeface (okay, okay: font) and not some wonky thing from Microsoft.

[PandathePanda]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

Finally, there are traditionalists, who expect e-books to look like print editions. I am one: when I see Chapter One, I always skip back to the beginning to see the title page and any other preliminaries. I want to see a TOC. I want to see justified text. I want to see indented paragraphs and no weird spacing between paras. I want to see a traditional typeface (okay, okay: font) and not some wonky thing from Microsoft.

Most of my fiction pbooks don't have a TOC, two trilogies have a basic TOC (book 1: page no# book 2: page no# book3: page no#) only one have a "valid" TOC, so an ebook with no/barebones TOC looks like a lot of my pbooks.

[Jellby]

Also, many paper books have a TOC at the end, at least in the Spanish tradition.