You may want to include in your book a series of lists or reprints of articles that relate to your text but just don’t seem to work when placed in the main body. No worries – you can include his material in an appendix.

An appendix is an addendum to your main text. For example, in Colin Fletcher’s classic hiking guide, “The Complete Walker III,” he included four appendices: a checklist of equipment; a list of mail-order retailers of backpack equipment, foods and services; a list of organizations that promote hiking; and quotations about hiking. The appendices follow the main text of your book or come right after the last chapter.

Of course, with today’s superb design software, such lists easily can be incorporated into the main text as breakout boxes or sidebars in spots where they’re mentioned. Sometimes, though, the lists simply are too long – Fletcher’s list of organizations that promote hiking runs 16 pages! That’s simply too much to place within the main text as a breakout box or sidebar, as readers will lose track of what is the main text and what isn’t.

Typically each appendix is given a Roman numeral (Appendix I, Appendix II, etc.) or a letter (Appendix A, Appendix B, etc.) to help separate them from the other appendices and from the main text’s chapters (which typically are numbered).

The page numbering that started back with the introduction continues through the appendices.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past decade, I’ve helped more than 300 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.