Five Pages

We all read them at sometime or other, although not all of them all the time. We open a book and flick past the page that tells us the title and who wrote it and we might catch the copyright year on the next page, along with a snippet that might say 'similarity to any persons living or dead'. On the next page we ignore the dedication because we don't know the person it's dedicated to and on the next we read the mood setting prosaic quote. Then we turn to the first page of the novel. And when we turn the last page we get the sometimes short, very often long list of acknowledgements that tell us the lengths the author went to for an authentic story. And importantly, how many people showed extraordinary commitment bringing the story to the printed page. I'm invoking the printed page for reasons I'll explain at the end.

In the lifetime of owning a book how much attention will you pay to these pages? Unless the prosaic quote is super cool or the dedication particularly imaginative the answer will of course be - very little. Sometimes acknowledgements can be interesting if you're stuck with nothing else to read. These are five nothing pages. You find them in every book and very recently I discovered creating them is not easy at all.

The Title Page - Admittedly the easiest. With the triviality of writing the book over, you now have to decide on a thought provoking title. It will probably be the one you thought of at the very beginning. Then you choose whether your plain ordinary 'own' name will be your author name, or maybe you make up something exotic. Then all you have to do is write both on this page. The publisher's name goes at the bottom. Simples.

Publisher's Statement - Sometimes also known as the title page verso  because it's always on the back of the title page. First off, none of the 'legal' stuff on this page will be a problem in a legal sense, not the: 'moral right as the author' stuff or the: 'persons living or dead' bit. This is all standard publishing legal speak. None of it has to be certified, no copyright has to be stamped, no sworn moral statement is recorded, and you don't sign a bit of paper guaranteeing none of the characters are real. You research the same page from similar genre books and make sure all the bases are covered, and of course make sure the correct publishing company, author name and copyright year are recorded on your page. The first real stumbling block will be the sequence of numerics and dashes at the bottom of the page. The ISBN is a unique product code assigned to your book. It will be used by sellers everywhere for selling, ordering and re-ordering the book. In the UK ISBNs are dished out by the Nielsen Agency. You fill in a form, attach your title and publisher statements, a cheque for under £200 and wait. Understanding the form is not always easy, it's got a guide you use when filling it in. You can also buy books that will help. You will get your ISBNs between 3 and 10 days after the agency receive your correctly filled in form. Then you put one ISBN for each version of your book (hardback/paperbook/epub) beneath the legal stuff, then a final mention for the publisher at the very bottom. Then this page is done.

The Dedication - Writing your first book is a very personal thing. So it seemed perfectly natural to me that I would dedicate the book to Me. Apparently that's verbatim. In the future I don't think this page will be so much of a problem. But for this first book the dedication had to be all about me. Finding someone I really, really wanted to dedicate my first book to, took over a year. Sending it to the printers forced the decision on me. I had three potentials that meant a lot. The dedication I chose meant the most in the end, other than Me.

Prosaic Quote - Strictly speaking you don't need one of these but they can set the scene. Of course you will need to acknowledge the quotes original author and seek appropriate permission, or use a very old one no longer covered by copyright. Or you can make up one of your own - which is what I did. The quote that immediately precedes the first proper page of my story started as a wordy tagline for the book. It evolved over a period of 18 months, usually as I walked across Hyde Park in the morning, into something a little tragic and beautiful. Which is perfect for the page that follows it.

Acknowledgements - Who'd ever have thought saying thank you could be so difficult and repetitive. My word of advice, start one of these just about the same time you decide to actually write a book, or you'll forget a whole bunch of people. And then when you have everyone you ever wanted to thank, you have to decide on levels. You start slowly and build pace to the chest beating eulogies. Of course I only started mine in the weeks prior to sending it off to be printed. It went from: 'It's too short and clinical.' To struggling not to sound like I was accepting an Oscar.

And finally, one day, the book will be in the reader's hands and we take comfort knowing they will have to flick past these pages to start reading. Unless of course they have an eReader, which will simply take them straight to the prosaic quote or maybe even the first page if you're not careful.