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📜 Front matter: the preface and the copyright page

Status: workflow, part of Write a book.

Written for an author setting up the pages before chapter 1. Assumed: an outline from spec init (step 1). Not covered here: the Glossary, List of Symbols and the lists of figures and tables, which are back matter by default.

Before chapter 1 a printed book carries, in order:

Page Where it comes from Who writes it
title page the outline's # title and - author: line nobody: it is generated
copyright page content/specs/<book>/copyright.tex you
table of contents the book nobody: it is generated
the front-matter chapters (a preface, "How to use this book", acknowledgements) ## Front matter {#front} in the outline you

Front-matter pages are numbered i, ii, iii, so chapter 1 still starts on page 1, and their chapters carry no chapter number.

✍ The preface

spec init puts it in the outline and writes a template for it:

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## Front matter {#front}

### Preface {#preface}

Why this book exists and who it is for. You write this page yourself.

The template is content/drafts/<book>/preface.md: a # Preface heading and a comment saying what a preface usually covers. No skill drafts it, because it is the one page in the book written in your own voice rather than grounded in the corpus. Write it, then accept it like any chapter:

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chitragupta draft unit accept content/drafts/twins preface

accept runs the citation gate, which a page citing nothing passes, and it needs no dossier. If the preface does cite a paper, the citekey is held to the same rule as every other chapter's: it must be in your .bib and in the ledger.

More front-matter pages are more chapters under {#front}, each a file you write and accept the same way:

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## Front matter {#front}

### Preface {#preface}

### How to use this book {#how-to-use}

### Acknowledgements {#acknowledgements}

They print in outline order, after the table of contents.

No preface? Delete the ### Preface {#preface} line from the outline, and the whole ## Front matter {#front} part if nothing is left in it. Re-sign the outline. preface.md stays on disk and unit status names it if you had accepted it (changing the outline).

Lists in the front. The List of Figures and List of Tables sit in the back matter by default. To print them after the table of contents instead, move their lines under {#front}:

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## Front matter {#front}

### List of Figures {#figures}

### List of Tables {#tables}

### Preface {#preface}

📄 The copyright page

spec init copies a template to content/specs/<book>/copyright.tex. The file is yours: edit it freely, and the assembler prints it as you left it, on the back of the title page. Delete the file and the book has no copyright page.

By default it prints:

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Composable Twins

© 2026 Prasad Talasila. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written
permission of the author.

Built 2026-11-05 · outline 7cfc6678f261 · chitragupta 6.164.0

Each part comes from one place:

On the page In the file Comes from
the title \BookTitle the outline's # heading
the author \BookAuthor the outline's - author: line
the year a plain number written once, by the first spec sign
the licence the two sentences after the year the template; yours to change
the build line \BuildLine the assembler, on every build

The title and author live in the outline, so the title page and the copyright page cannot disagree. Set the author with spec init --author "Prasad Talasila", or by adding the line yourself near the top of spec.md, before the first ## heading:

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# Composable Twins

- author: Prasad Talasila

spec show prints it under the title. Changing it changes the outline, so spec status asks you to sign again; no chapter's acceptance is affected, because the line belongs to no chapter. With no - author: line, the assembler asks you for a name when it composes the book and never invents one.

The year is written once. The template holds a <year> placeholder, and the first spec sign replaces it with the current year (sign-off). From then on the file is never touched by any command: a copyright year is the year of first publication, so a book rebuilt in 2027 still says 2026 until you change it.

"All rights reserved" is the default. It means nobody may copy the book without your permission; you hold the copyright automatically, and the notice tells readers so. To publish under a Creative Commons licence instead, replace the two licence sentences; the template carries the CC BY 4.0 wording as a comment to start from:

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\noindent\copyright\ 2026 \BookAuthor. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY
4.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Either way, the notice covers your own words. A figure or passage adapted from someone else's work keeps that work's licence, and needs the credit that licence asks for, in the chapter that uses it.

The build line says which build a printed copy came from: the date the book was assembled, the digest of the outline it was assembled from (the one spec status prints), and the pipeline version. Two copies with the same line were built from the same approved outline by the same pipeline. Delete \BuildLine from the file if you do not want it printed.

Do not put the copyright page in the outline. It is not a chapter: it has no heading and no line in the table of contents, which is why it is a LaTeX file beside the outline, the way preamble.tex is, rather than an entry in it. Editing it needs no re-sign.