Picture this scene: You have finally finished writing your book and have just revised the manuscript. Before you send it to an editor, you want to make sure that your manuscript has a personal touch or a special message you want to convey to your future readers.
While searching for ways to do that, you might open some books and find that they contain a preface right at the beginning. So you start asking yourself: What is a preface exactly, why do authors add one in their books, and should you be adding one yourself?
Well, we are going to answer all your questions in this article, where we will discuss the definition of a preface, its uses, and how to write a great one.
A preface is part of the front matter of the book, which is the pages that come before the first chapter and is intended to address the readers directly. It is written by the author and describes their thought process as they write the book, how they research the topics or the goals they want to achieve through the book.
While they all come before the main body of the book, there are many differences between them. Here is what each of them stands for:
While a preface can be a good addition to your book, you need to think carefully about whether or not you truly need one. In most cases, a prologue (for fiction books) and a foreword or an introduction (for non-fiction books) can be enough. However, it depends on your content and how well-known your work is among readers.
There are many reasons for writing a preface for your book. For some authors, the idea of enriching the information in their book is a good enough reason; for others, they want to share moments from their writing process that readers might benefit from reading. A preface can work out well for you when:
While you might find the above reasons convincing enough, you must know that not every book needs a preface. Here is when you don’t have to write one:
So far, we’ve covered what a preface is and what makes it different from the other parts of the front matter, but how do you actually write one? While there are no rules set in stone, there are many simple yet effective ways you can follow to improve your preface.
You should keep a look out for the following:
As for what you can actually write about in a preface, you can skim through this list for ideas:
Now that you know the basic guidelines of how to write a preface, you can try writing one yourself. There are no set templates out there for authors to follow, but there are plenty of great examples to look at and a number of topics you might consider essential to your book’s preface.
To help you with the writing process of the book preface, we’ve created two templates, one for fiction books and one for non-fiction.
Introduce yourself and state your credentials to add credibility. Talk to the reader directly using a conversational but informative tone. If you will be talking about personal experiences in the book, your tone can be more informal and emotional.
Talk about the basic ideas or the topics that the book discusses. Don’t add too much detail, especially if you’re also writing an introduction. If you’ve done fieldwork, collected data from surveys, or performed a meta-analysis of several studies, you can mention it here.
Try to sell your idea to the reader; what will they gain from reading your book? You can list the reasons why this book is important to read or study.
If you want, you can include what inspired you to write this book, how the ideas came to you, and how you translated them into words on the page. Was there a specific moment you remember most out of your time writing the book? Talk about it; explain your emotions and thoughts, but make it relevant to the book.
Optionally, you can end the preface by wishing the reader well and signing off with your name and the date you wrote all of the above.
Start by greeting your readers; your tone here can be something between conversational and emotional. Introduce yourself and the piece of information you want to explain in the preface.
Give snippets of your thoughts while writing the book and what inspired you to incorporate, for example, more complex worldbuilding or magic systems, etc. If there are several bits of lore you want to discuss, go through them in a systematic order.
Talk about how you did your research for the book and write about its significance. Then you can tie everything back to the book by linking the supplemental information with the fictional world of your story.
Write your name and the date of writing; you can add your location as well if it’s relevant.
In practice, most authors who write prefaces tend to be more creative with them. To see it in action, you can read through the following examples of authors using the prefaces of their books to convey ideas to their readers:
Though Wilde’s writing in his preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray doesn’t quite align with our templates above, it’s still food for thought. In it, he writes about the idea of art and how humans interpret it. Though Wilde does not outright describe his feelings on art, they are made clear through his wording, as seen in lines like, “We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.” His philosophy takes some level of thought to understand, and so does art.
This is an example of a preface written in the second edition of a book. W. H. Howe first explains the book’s purpose, then he talks about a moment that he claims was “too good to be lost.” As a result, the preface adds to the reading experience by providing an anecdote that readers may enjoy.
Since this is a medical publication, the preface gives brief details about the contents of each chapter followed by giving thanks to the co-writers of the book and the directors overseeing the research process. This piece is short, concise, and informative to demonstrate what readers can expect to learn in the book.
Not every book needs a preface. What makes it relevant to your book is what it adds to the reading experience. Does your preface shed light on interesting parts of your writing process? Does it justify the data you have presented in your research? Whether or not you have something extra to share with readers through the preface is up to you.
On a final note, don’t be scared of writing a preface just because some people don’t! This is your book and your hard work. Writing a preface for your book is largely your decision since it’s optional and not a requirement. With that said, try it out; maybe your book does need that cherry on top after all!
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