How to Add Footnotes and Endnotes to a Book (Print and Ebook)

Footnotes look simple in a Word document: a little number in the text and the note at the bottom of the page. Then you make an ebook, and there's no bottom of the page. Or you make a paperback, and your formatting tool quietly drops the notes altogether.

Here's how footnotes and endnotes actually work in a printed book and an ebook, which to choose, and how to get them right in both.

Footnotes or endnotes?

A footnote sits at the foot of the same page as its number, so the reader can glance down and back. An endnote sits in a list at the end of the chapter or the end of the book.

• Footnotes suit short asides: a quick definition, a translation, a dry comment, a source the reader might actually want to check.
• Endnotes suit heavy referencing: long citations or dozens of sources per chapter, which would swamp the page as footnotes.
• In fiction, notes are rare, and nearly always footnotes when they're used: an invented scholar's aside, a translation, a joke the narrator can't resist.

If you're not sure, ask whether a reader will want the note right now. If they will, make it a footnote. If it's there for the record, an endnote is kinder to the page.

How footnotes work in print

In a paperback or hardback, a footnote goes at the foot of the page its number falls on, separated from the text by a short rule and set slightly smaller. The numbering is worked out when the book is laid out, so if a paragraph moves to another page as you revise, its note moves with it.

How footnotes work in an ebook

An ebook has no fixed pages, because the text reflows to whatever size the reader picks. So a footnote can't sit at the foot of a page. Instead, the number becomes a link, and the notes are gathered at the end of the chapter.

The good news is that most readers never see that list. If the ebook marks its notes properly, Kindle and Apple Books show the note as a pop-up: the reader taps the number, reads the note over the page, and carries on where they were. On readers without pop-ups, the number takes them to the note and a link brings them back.

This is why an ebook made by simply saving a Word file often gets notes wrong. The notes come out as plain text at the end, or as numbers with no notes at all, and the reader is thrown to the end of the book with no easy way back.

Why footnotes so often break

• The note text gets lost. Some conversions keep the little numbers but throw away what the notes said. Always check a few notes in the finished files, not just the numbers.
• The tool can't do them in print. Amazon's free Kindle Create, for example, doesn't support footnotes or endnotes in paperbacks (more in our Koberger vs Kindle Create comparison).
• The notes are typed by hand. A superscript number you typed yourself and a note you typed at the bottom of the page aren't linked. Use your word processor's own footnote command, so the number and the note travel together.

Tips for notes readers won't mind

• Put the number after the punctuation: "a taste for vintages;¹", not "a taste for vintages¹;". The common exception is a dash, where the number goes before it.
• Restart the numbering each chapter, so you don't end up with note 247.
• Keep footnotes short. A long note looks heavy at the foot of a print page, and a pop-up that needs scrolling defeats the point of a pop-up.
• In fiction, don't hide anything essential in a note. Some readers skip them, so anything the story needs belongs in the text.
• Never write "see page 42" in an ebook. Ebooks don't have fixed pages, so link to the chapter or section instead.

Adding footnotes in Koberger

If you format with Koberger, notes are handled for you in every format:

• Bring them in from Word. Footnotes and endnotes in your Word file are read when you import it and become proper notes, so there's nothing to redo.
• Or add them as you go. Put your cursor where the number should be, press Note in the editor's toolbar, and type the note.
• Print: each note sits at the foot of its page, numbered automatically, restarting in each chapter.
• Ebook: notes open as pop-ups on Kindle and Apple Books, with a link to the note and back for other readers.
• Word: the notes are listed at the end of each chapter, for your editor or proofreader.

If you'd rather collect your notes at the back of the book, add an Endnotes page in the back matter and write them there. Koberger treats that as its own page, so you number and order those notes yourself.

You can import your manuscript and check every note in the print and ebook previews for free, including the Kindle version. You only pay when you're ready to download your finished files.