This week I'm sending the publisher the second jewelry how-to book I've edited. Finishing a huge project awakens a range of thoughts: Hooray! Whew! How did all these empty coffee mugs get on my desk? Did I remember to send everything?
I did almost forget one item: a book map. Since I know that some of you are interested in book publishing, l thought I'd share this helpful tool.
What is a Book Map?
A book map is the layout of all the book's pages. It's especially useful for books such as craft books where you need to meet a certain page count, rather than word count.
Here's a simple one that I've created for this blog post:
In this example, you can see that I've allowed two facing pages (p. 5-6) for the Introduction. This means that the reader can begin reading the introduction on the left page and finish reading on the right page. I could also use the left page for a beautiful photo and the right page for related text.
How to Create a Book Map
You can use Excel to create a map for your book. You can use one table cell for the page number and another cell for the content. If you don't need an electronic file, you can sketch out a quick map with pencil and paper or print out your book pages and rearrange them on the floor.
Why You Might Need a Book Map
Long Non-Fiction Books
A ten-page book won't require a map, but a 100-page book might. Can you visualize the entire book in your head?
Book maps are especially helpful for most non-fiction, but I can see possibilities for fiction (and memoirs), especially for pacing and plotting. You could see if the chapters are similar in length or whether there are long sections without important plot events.
Organization and Flow
I'm a very visual person, so book maps make it easy to see how everything will flow from one page to the next. If there isn't a natural organization for the book (such as easiest to hardest projects), a map may help you determine the best arrangement.
In-Progress Checklist
Book maps can also provide a checklist for an in-progress project, letting you see if you'll need additional material or (more likely) need to cut some projects to fit.
Obviously, fitting the book into a firm page count is more important in traditional print publishing. (Printing extra pages on paper costs money and inflates the price of the book.)
A book map also helps you remember those easy-to-forget bits and pieces such as the copyright statement and index.
Ebook trivia alert: Because of the free preview feature offered by places such as Amazon, many ebooks move traditional front-of-the-book items such as the Acknowledgments page and copyright info to the back of the book. This gives potential readers get more "real" content in their free sample.
Publishing Checklist
The Book Studio gives a nice overview of how a graphic designer uses a book map, plus all the other things that your graphic designer will do for your book (or that you'll do yourself if you're self-publishing).
By the way, magazines use maps, too, to lay out the pages. Sometimes these maps change quite a bit. For example, if an ad is pulled at the last minute or an author fails to deliver her article, then the editors will need to figure out what to place in that spot, whether it's a new piece or whether an existing article may be extended to cover the gap.
Go forth and create book maps for your books. As for me, I'm going to take a short break and make a few of these mini notebook necklaces. No book maps required!