structure of a book

The common structural parts of a book include:
• Front cover: hardbound or soft cover (paperback); the spine is the binding that joins the front and rear covers where the pages hinge.
• Front endpaper
• Flyleaf: The blank leaf or leaves following the front free endpaper.
• Front matter
o Frontispiece
o Title page
o Copyright page: typically verso of title page: shows copyright owner/date, credits, edition/printing, cataloguing details
o Table of contents
o List of figures
o List of tables
o Dedication
o Acknowledgments
o Foreword
o Preface
o Introduction


Binding of a book from separate papers
• Body: the text or contents, the pages often collected or folded into signatures; the pages are usually numbered sequentially, and often divided into chapters.
• Back matter
o Appendix
o Glossary
o Index
o Notes
o Bibliography
o Colophon
• Flyleaf: The blank leaf or leaves (if any) preceding the back free endpaper.
• Rear endpaper
• Rear cover
A thin marker commonly made of paper or card, used to keep one's place in a book is a bookmark. Bookmarks were used throughout the medieval period, consisting usually of a small parchment strip attached to the edge of folio (or a piece of cord attached to headband). Bookmarks in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were narrow silk ribbons bound into the book and become widespread in the 1850s. They were usually made from silk, embroidered fabrics or leather. Not until the 1880s did paper and other materials become more common.
The process of physically assembling a book from a number of folded or unfolded sheets of paper is bookbinding.