Do maps go at the front or back of a novel?

If there’s just one map, both. Otherwise, it depends.


Fantasy stories are often set in fictional lands, and in fantasy books it is common to have a map of that land shown somewhere in the book so that the reader can work out where things happen relative to each other.

Complex stories may have multiple maps – of multiple scales.

If you have just one map for your story (which is usually a map of the entire land that the story takes place in), then you should place it at both the start and end of the book. This is because readers often need to go back and forth to the map as they are reading, to correlate what they’re reading to what they can see on the map, and it is more convenient if they can turn fewer pages to get to it.

If you have multiple maps for your story, it’s a bit excessive to include all of them at both the start and end of the book. If one of the maps is a map of the entire land, then that map should go at both the start and end of the book, with all of the others just going in one location. If none of the maps are of the entire land, then all of the maps should go in just one place. This is usually at the end of the book, though you could choose to put them at the start (and this can make the story more enticing for the reader, as they very quickly gain an understanding of the land).

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