Back Matter Formatting

Back matter is a section added after the book content. It's a message from the author to the reader and has a number of purposes. 

1. If you've left an impression, now is a good time to ask the reader to leave a review. Remember writing those in school? Most people hate doing them so find a way of giving the reader guidance. Author Cathy Astolfo gave some excellent guidance on review writing.  In her words:
What I am interested in is your reaction to the novel. This is your opportunity to write two or three sentences (or more) giving your opinion. You are not bound by the old rules. You are relieved of the summary task and you don’t have to prove any expert literary skill to anyone. (Although you may want to demonstrate correct spelling and grammar to be taken seriously.) Your only goal is to tell other readers what you thought and how you felt about this particular book.

2. Want to pass on any information about how you came to write the book? This, in my opinion, is less formal and a better place than putting it in a preface.

3. Have you written other books? This is an ideal place to tell the reader about them and give easy links to where they can buy them. If this is a paper book, use shortened links that are easy to type. I recommend books2read.com links, a domain owned by Draft2Digital which is free and easy to use. For example for my book “Time After Time” I created the link https://books2read.com/tat which points the reader to lots of e-retailers and also automatically adds the appropriate affiliate link.

4. Give the reader an opportunity to join a mailing list or visit a website about the book. 

Example: Here's the back matter for that  “Time After Time” book: