[Tex/LaTex] Resources for title page and front matter design

book-designfront-mattertitles

I need to create the area between the outer cover and the table of contents for a novel. This will present (at least partially, but preferably at a minimum):

the title
the author's name
the translator's name
the year of first publication
the name of the book series

I basically need a place to display this information, but (perhaps or preferably) not all crowded into the same page.

Most of the documentation I have read suggests that this is a highly important part of all books and that the book-makers need to creation this part of the book themselves.

So, I am looking for resources which will aid LaTeX book-makers (such as myself) in creating this part of the book. So far, I have found:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Title_Creation
This contains a lot of details, but there was only 1 example, which is not very suitable for a work of fiction.
http://ctan.org/tex-archive/info/latex-samples/TitlePages
This has some great-looking examples, however, the dependencies are all very complicated (i.e. knowing which packages to load in order to compile an example requires familiarity with dozens of packages), and they are also limited to 1 page.

Most of the other resources I have seen appear more suited for writers of technical documentation or thesis on A4 paper. I am not sure how well this translates to works of fiction printed on a small size for reading on a park bench. I have found no examples focused on novel-sized material, focusing on use of the book, octavo class or fiction-focused classes, or with styles suitable for works of fiction (either old or new).

I'm looking for at least 1 of these:

Explanations or links to documents describing the design aspects of title pages and front matter relevant to fiction (or novels in general); old or new methods (any is appropriate).
Explanations or links to documents describing how to achieve good results between \begin{titlepage} and \end{titlepage} (i.e. achieving proper placement of the elements).
Links to or samples of source code (either from real works or produced as demonstration code).
Suggestions for packages, macros, fonts, and other design elements which could benefit users wishing to create title pages and front matter for their works.
Large or small ideas for how to achieve an excellent-looking title page and front matter with LaTeX (or in general).

Best Answer

http://ctan.org/tex-archive/info/latex-samples/TitlePages This has some great-looking examples, however, the dependencies are all very complicated (i.e. knowing which packages to load in order to compile an example requires familiarity with dozens of packages), and they are also limited to 1 page.

I have taken (some of those examples) in the past and put them as individual examples. You can download these from Here, Here, Here, and Here. I have changed the examples little to work with xepersian package to typeset Persian documents.

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[Tex/LaTex] Order of the pages in the front matter of a book

Allowed question or not, I'll make some suggestions.

Half-title pages (displaying nothing but the main title of a book) were introduced to protect the main title page, as Peter Wilson correctly states. Today, this is often achieved by dust jackets. If you still want to include a half-title page, don't put it after the title page.
If your abstract is formatted as an (unnumbered) chapter, putting it before the preface is surely an option. As an alternative (or in case of special formatting), you could place it before the ToC or even before the dedication.

[Tex/LaTex] Title page oddly centered

You can use geometry:

\documentclass[12pt, a4paper, titlepage, twoside, openright]{book}
\usepackage[pass]{geometry}
\usepackage{graphicx}   %Figures management
\linespread{1.2}

\begin{document}
\newgeometry{margin=2cm}
\begin{titlepage}
\linespread{1}
\centering

{\Large\scshape Alma Mater Studiorum $\cdot$ Universit\`a di Bologna}

\rule[0.1cm]{15.8cm}{0.1mm}
\rule[0.5cm]{15.8cm}{0.6mm}

{\bfseries FACULTY OF ENGINEERING \\ Master degree in Electrical Engineering

\small Curriculum:\\ Electronic systems for information processing\par}

\vspace{15mm}

{\LARGE\bfseries Power consumption analysis\\
 for self diagnosis of\\
 Wireless Sensor Nodes\par}

\vspace{19mm}

{\large\bfseries Master thesis in Electronic Calculators M\par}

\vspace{40mm}

\begin{minipage}[t]{0.50\textwidth}
\bfseries Supervisors:\\
\large Prof. Tullio Salmon Cinotti \\ Dr. Syed Aly Aamer
\end{minipage}%
\hfill
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.47\textwidth}\raggedleft
\bfseries Author:\\
\large Claudio Bacchiani
\end{minipage}

\vfill

{\large\bfseries Session 1\\ Year 2011-2012}
\end{titlepage}
\restoregeometry

The rest of the document

\end{document}

The pass option won't change the default parameters of the class, but will allow to use \newgeometry.

Notice the simplifications in the input: \large and \bfseries are declarations, so they don't have arguments. Beware that \bf is obsolete.

A style remark: in Italian the given name goes always before the family name. Whoever says the contrary is simply a bureaucrat.

You might consider using the package frontespizio:

\documentclass[a4paper]{book}

\usepackage{frontespizio}

\begin{document}

\begin{frontespizio}

\Istituzione{ALMA MATER STUDIORUM $\cdot$ UNIVERSIT\`A DI BOLOGNA}
\Divisione{Faculty of Engineering}
\Scuola{Master degree in Electrical Engineering\\
  Curriculum:\\
  Electronic systems for information processing}
\Titolo{Power consumption analysis \\
  for self diagnosis of \\
  Wireless Sensor Nodes}
\Sottotitolo{Master thesis in Electronic Calculators M}

\Candidato{Claudio Bacchiani}
\Relatore{Prof. Tullio Salmon Cinotti}
\Relatore{Dr. Syed Aly Aamer}

\NCandidato{Author}
\NRelatore{Advisor}{Advisors}
\Piede{Session 1 \\ Year 2011--2012}

\Margini{2.5cm}{1cm}{2.5cm}{2cm}


\end{frontespizio}

Best Answer

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[Tex/LaTex] Order of the pages in the front matter of a book

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