There’s nothing inherently wrong with opting to forgo legacy publishers. I’ve done it six times—and I’m hardly an anomaly.

Eschewing the publishing establishment is both liberating and a smidge daunting. You can create the book exactly as you wish. There are so many things to know and do. In this post, I’ll describe a subtle yet important element of book design that separates non-fiction pros from poseurs.

Footnotes

Footnotes ought to reference optional facts that just don’t make sense to include in the main text. Here’s a perfect example from the fourth Racket title, Reimagining Payments:

In this case, the derivation of custodian isn’t essential to know. What’s more, you or your designer should place them at the bottom of each referenced page—and not the following printed one. Doing so allows the curious reader to delve deeper. In a properly formatted ebook, each footnote is a clickable link.

Fun fact: Sometimes, the author cannot use footnotes. The For Dummies style guide explicitly forbids them, among other things. Writers have to adjust. No one’s breaking tradition because of your penchant for footnotes.

Manuscript and Design Notes

When you write your manuscript in Microsoft Word, the application will automatically assign a natural number to each footnote.¹ Don’t sweat it. Your designer will—or, at least, should—convert those numbers to proper symbols. Long Roman numerals can create weird spacing issues.

While we’re on the topic, footnote symbols should reset on each page. For example, a single asterisk—or whatever you like—should reference the first footnote on page 123 and the first one on page 124. Multiple asterisks suck. The universe of available symbols is vast. It includes daggers, double daggers, section signs, and more. (Side note: More than three footnotes on a single page is excessive.)

Endnotes

Endnotes cite sources. In the excerpt at the top of this post, an endnote follows the Merriam-Webster citation as it should. (See number 24.) Sadly, many amateur authors conflate footnotes with endnotes here. It’s a rookie mistake. Here’s a redacted example from a recent non-fiction book:

Use endnotes throughout your non-fiction book, but don’t put them at the bottom of the referenced page. Rather, you or your designer should place them either at the end of chapters or in a book’s back matter in a dedicated section, like this:

Designers render footnotes the same as endnotes in ebooks: as clickable links. That is the main similarity between the two.

Manuscript and Design Notes

MS Word assigns Roman numerals to endnotes and won’t reset them in your manuscript by default. Again, your designer will take care of it. Expect regular numbers in the final book. I’m a fan of resetting them every chapter. (See the Endnotes figure above.) If the first footnote in Chapter 13 is number 189, the reader will be justifiably puzzled. It also means that you “laid out” your book in Word, not a proper design application.

Why You Should Start Small With Your Ghostwriter

Pro Tip

If you place a link in your footnote, as Michelle does below, for God’s sake, use a URL shortener. I’m a fan of TinyURL and Bitly.

If you go to that shortened link, the site will direct you to the original, much longer URL:

https://www.upguard.com/blog/biggest-data-breaches-financial-services

Note that the link in the footnote above is user-friendly, memorable, and mnemonic.

URL Length

Putting an absurdly long URL in the endnotes is bad enough. The greater sin is placing a 123-character URL in a footnote. (I’ve seen a few experienced scribes who should know better do this.) You waste valuable space and come across as a novice. Oh, and any designer worth her salt will give you the stink eye.

Over the course of a decent-sized text, saving 40 or more characters per endnote or endnote adds up. The current book that I’m ghostwriting will contain more than 500 endnotes when all is said and done. Ultimately, by my estimation, using a URL shortener will reduce the book’s final length by at least 12 printed pages. Apart from benefiting the environment, a shorter page count means lower printing costs. (No, recent inflation hasn’t spared books.) Finally, reducing pages minimizes shipping expenses.

What You Need to Know

Yeah, I’m picking nits, but little details such as these matter. Discerning potential readers will notice them while assessing the professionalism of your book and, ultimately, the person who wrote it.

1. Also called a counting number. (Yes, I’m intentionally using a footnote here.)