Designing books and magazines is my main job, so I was horrified and scandalized to read this post from Teresa Nielsen Hayden (via boingboing) describing a web page she found:
They call themselves Back Yard Publisher, but I prefer the page’s title tag: Publishing Your Manuescript. Their motto is good, too: Remember! There’s A Publisher in You’re Own Back Yard.
Among the examples from this idiotic and just plain wrong primer on publishing is:
A Table of contents is normally used in a nonfiction book. It is normally not used in a book of fiction; however, chapter titles are sometimes used in fiction books.
The table of contents should always start on a right hand page.
The presence of a ToC in fiction is entirely up to the author; and a ToC can fall on a left-hand page if that’s where you need to put it.
Note: Many times it is easier to generate the table of contents after the last page of the book rather then at its normal position in the front of the book.
Say what?
Generating it in the front of the book will normally change the page count and make it incorrect.
We already know BYP doesn’t know squat about book design, but if we needed a smoking gun, this would be it.
