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Start Page

An ebook can be marked with a Start Page, the page a reader should see when she first opens the book.

Often, the Start Page is not the first page of the ebook. In fact, most guidelines recommend using the Start Page to take a reader straight to the main content, skipping past front matter like a Copyright page or Table of Contents.

Vellum automatically declares your book’s Start Page by analyzing the elements of your book. As you test the Start Page, keep in mind that not all platforms support this feature.

Determining the Start Page

To determine the Start Page, Vellum examines your book to see where the content of your book begins.

Vellum uses element types to determine the start page. Typically, this will be the first element that is one of these types:

In this example, Chapter 1 (a Chapter element) will be declared as the Start Page:

The Start Page may come earlier, though, if you have introductory matter that uses one of these element types:

In the example below, the Prologue will be declared as the book’s Start Page:

Testing Your Book’s Start Page

The best way to test the Start Page is to load it directly into an application or onto a device. Desktop apps such as Kindle Previewer work well for this, or you can use any of the methods described in Proofing Your Books.

In Kindle Previewer, you can go to the Start Page using Navigation ▸ Go to Beginning:

Keep in mind that this only tests the Start Page that has been declared by Vellum. The actual start page seen by readers may change based on the publishing platform.

Start Page Platform Issues

When publishing your book, you may find that the Start Page that has been declared isn’t always respected.

KDP
When you publish your book through KDP, Amazon will determine a Start Page using its own proprietary algorithm. This may or may not match the Start Page that has been declared by Vellum.
Kobo
Unfortunately, Kobo devices and reading applications do not recognize the start page declared in ebooks, and will always open to the very beginning.

Apple Books Samples and the Start Page

Apple Books uses the Start Page as the beginning of the automatically-created sample that can be downloaded by customers. Anything before the Start Page will be excluded from the sample.

If there is a piece of front matter you’d rather be included, you can create and use your own sample when you upload to the Apple Books Store.