There's one simple reason why your e-book should have a Table of Contents.

For a long time, I didn’t bother creating a Table of Contents for my e-books.

Now, every book I publish includes a Table of Contents.

I didn’t understand why a Table of Contents mattered until I purchased a Kindle Paperwhite a few months ago. I love my Kindle Paperwhite, and I now understand what it’s like to read my own books on an e-reader.

And because I never owned a Kindle, I didn’t realize I had majorly screwed up the Table of Contents for First of Their Kind by not properly formatting my e-book.

When I opened up my novel to see what it looked like on my Kindle, I used Kindle’s built in “Navigation” feature. What I found astounded me.

It showed five chapters, skipped chapter 6, included chapter 7, then no other chapter after chapter 7!

And now my books all have a TOC! The navigation bar on the left; the in-text TOC on the right (from Flight of the 500)

I was embarrassed, to say the least, that I had put my book out into the world without a proper Table of Contents. Understandably, I immediately wondered whether I’d lost readers because they opened the Navigation feature and saw how terrible it looked.

Needless to say, I immediately edited every e-book I’d published to include a Table of Contents.

So with a Table of Contents, what do I gain? A more professional looking product.

That’s the one reason your e-book should have a Table of Contents. It simply looks better. And you’ve given your readers extra functionality with your book.

So maybe there are two reasons, but I’d argue they go hand-in-hand.

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Unsure how to make a Table of Contents for your e-book? Learn the seven basic steps to formatting your e-book in Microsoft Word.