typesetting.ai

Front matter generator

A copyright page, title page and the rest of the pages before chapter one. Fill in what you know, copy the text into your manuscript. Free, and nothing leaves your browser.

This book is

Fiction gets the “any resemblance is coincidental” disclaimer. Non-fiction must not — it would be an odd thing to assert about a memoir.

Rights

Your front matter

Title page

A right-hand page, on its own. No page number, no header.

Untitled

Author name

Copyright page

The back of the title page, always. Set smaller than body text.

Untitled
Copyright © 2026 Author name

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

First edition

The page nobody knows how to write

Every other part of a book is something you decided. The copyright page is a form you have never filled in, written in language you have only ever skimmed, and it is on the second page of your book where everyone will see it.

The substance is small: a notice naming the year and the rights holder, and a statement of what others may do with the work. Everything else on a traditional copyright page — cataloguing data, printer's keys, a chain of imprints — belongs to a publishing apparatus a self-published book does not have, and copying it in makes the book look less professional rather than more.

What goes where

  1. Also by this author — if you have other books. The one page in a book whose job is to sell another.
  2. Title page — a right-hand page, on its own, no page number.
  3. Copyright page — the reverse of the title page, always. Set a size or two smaller than body text.
  4. Dedication — a right-hand page, short and centred, with no heading of its own.
  5. About the author — at the back. It is the last thing a reader who enjoyed the book will look for.

This is a template, not legal advice

The wording here follows normal publishing convention and is fine for an ordinary book. It is not drafted for your jurisdiction, and it does not cover a co-authored work, licensed material, quoted lyrics, or anything you did not write yourself. If your book involves any of those, the copyright page is worth ten minutes of a lawyer's time.

Questions

What actually has to be on a copyright page?
Less than people fear. The copyright notice — the © symbol, the year of first publication and the name of the rights holder — is the substantive part. Everything else is convention: the rights statement, the edition, the ISBN, the publisher's imprint. In most countries copyright exists from the moment you write something, so the page records a claim rather than creating one.
Do I need to register my copyright first?
Not to publish, and not to put a notice on the page. Copyright arises automatically on creation almost everywhere. Registration is a separate step that in some countries — the United States notably — strengthens what you can claim in a dispute. That is a question for a lawyer in your jurisdiction, not for a formatting tool.
Why does fiction get an extra paragraph?
The “any resemblance to actual persons is coincidental” disclaimer only makes sense for invented work. On a memoir it would be an odd thing to assert about your own life, and on a history it would undercut the book. So the generator only includes it when you say the book is fiction.
Do I need an ISBN?
Not for a Kindle ebook — Amazon assigns its own identifier. For print, KDP will give you a free ISBN, with the trade-off that it lists KDP as the publisher and cannot be used elsewhere. Buying your own keeps the imprint yours and travels with the book. Leave the field blank if you have not decided.
What order do these pages go in?
Also-by, then title page, then copyright on its reverse, then dedication. The copyright page is always the back of the title page, which is why they are never separated. About-the-author goes at the end of the book rather than the front, and the generator labels it as such.
Where does this text go?
At the top of your manuscript, before chapter one. Copy each page in, keep them in order, then run the file through one of the formatters — the chapter detection will treat them as front matter rather than as chapters.

Once the front matter is in your manuscript, format it: KDP and Kindle, EPUB, or a print interior.