The Table of Contents (TOC) has led to much hair-tearing by self-published authors, me included. That’s partly because it should be clickable so that the reader can go to, say, Chapter 4, with a single mouse click or touch on the screen.

Why is a clickable TOC necessary?

Because ebooks are not as easy to handle as traditional print books. With print, it’s a doddle to hop back a few chapters or pages to check on something you want to know. With ebooks, not so much. So it’s a very good idea to give readers a table of contents that they can click in order to move between chapters.

Clearly a TOC is essential for non-fiction. Some authors maintain that it’s not necessary for fiction. I disagree. I think all fiction ebooks should include a clickable TOC. And note that Amazon agrees. Amazon KDP have been known to reject an uploaded MS if it doesn’t have a TOC. The KDP instructions say that a clickable TOC should be included.

So this blog is about how you ensure that your MS includes the clickable TOC that Amazon (and readers) want.

Step 1: format your chapter headings

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Your chapter headings—chapter 1, or ONE, or a chapter name, say—form the elements of your Table of Contents. By far the easiest way to create a TOC is to use Word’s automatic TOC function which requires you to use Word Styles.

I published a detailed blog, some months ago, on how to use Word’s Styles when writing and formatting your MS. I recommend that you set up the four basic Styles described in that blog and use them while you are writing your book. Otherwise, you’re going to have to go through all your MS again, after it’s finished, and format it.
Why do it twice when once will do?

Once you’ve set up your 4 styles and applied them to your MS, it will appear rather like this one (though without the coloured sidebars):

Joanna Maitland’s “The Solway Bride”, showing 3 of the styles in use.
The chapter title is Heading 1 style; the opening paragraph is non-indented style; paragraphs 2, 3, 4 are normal (indented) style.

Use Heading 1 Style because it saves you work

I recommend that you use the Heading 1 Style for your chapter headings. Yes, you could use something else—like chapter title—but Word’s TOC creator expects to be based on Heading 1, so why make things difficult for yourself?

If you use something else (chaptername, say) you will have to modify the TOC creator in order to make it work. I’m all for ensuring that authors have the least possible work to do when formatting for self-publishing. That’s why I strongly recommend using Heading 1.

There are detailed instructions on setting up Heading 1 as your chapter heading style towards the end of my blog here (figures 17-22). Once you’ve done that and applied these styles to your MS, you can move on to the next stage, which is…

Step 2: creating a clickable table of contents (TOC)

Figure 1

In practice, a clickable TOC will look something like the one shown in figure 1. (This is a screenshot from Amazon’s Look Inside feature for The Mystery Mistletoe Bride. Only the blue items in this TOC are clickable. You have to buy the book—feel free to do so!—for the other chapters to be available to you.)

The instructions and illustrations below are for using Word on a Windows PC. Where they are different, I have included Mac instructions, too, based on information from the KDP website, but I can’t promise it will work. On my older version (Word for Mac 2011), it definitely did NOT work I’m sorry to say 🙂 but current versions of Word for Mac include a clickable TOC facility comparable with the one in Windows.

Where to put your TOC

Your TOC should go at the front of your book. I recommend putting it just before the start of your text (ie after the rest of the front matter). Create a new blank page there (using Insert/Break/Page Break or Ctrl+Enter).

How to create your TOC

With your MS document open at the blank TOC page (and you have already turned your chapter headings into Heading 1 Styles, haven’t you?) click the References tab. You should see something like this:

Figure 2

Click Table of Contents, click Automatic Table 1.
[MAC: click Table of Contents, click Classic.]

Figure 3

That will give you a Table of Contents where you had your cursor on the blank page. All your Heading 1 elements will be included. In this screenshot, I’ve shrunk the page so that you can see it all. Note that there are page numbers for each chapter and dotted leaders, too.

Figure 4

Click Table of Contents again, then click Insert Table of Contents (in some versions of Word it may be Custom Table of Contents).

Figure 5

A dialogue box will appear with a tick against Show Page Numbers.

Figure 6

Ebooks do not have page numbers because they have reflowable text so untick Show Page Numbers. Set the Show Levels choice to 1 (because you are only including Heading 1/ chapter titles in your TOC). Your dialogue box will look something like the one below. Click OK.

Figure 7

A new dialogue box (below) will ask whether you want to replace the TOC. Click YES.

Figure 8

You will then see something like this, with no page numbers. Each of those chapter names is a clickable link. Honest!

Figure 9

Ensuring that the published ebook can find your TOC

You need to insert a bookmark so that the TOC shows in your ebook, for example, in the GoTo link on a Kindle. This is how you do that.
On your Table of Contents page, highlight your title: Contents.
Click the Insert tab and then click Bookmark.

Figure 10

In the Bookmark dialogue screen, type toc in the field labelled Bookmark Name. Click Add. The bookmark dialogue should close automatically. If it doesn’t, click on the Close button.

Figure 11

One final task. Ensure you’ve added a page break (using Insert/Break/Page Break or Ctrl+Enter) at the end of your TOC.

Figure 12

Step 3: using more than one heading style

For most fiction, a single heading style, for chapters, is all you need. But sometimes, there’s a case for more than one level in your TOC.

Figure 13

The TOC shown here (left), from the Beach Hut Surprise anthology, shows the titles of novellas rather than chapter headings. It also shows, under each novella title, an “about the author” feature. The layout isn’t as good as I’d like, because Amazon insists on indenting the first line of everything, and the longer titles spread over 2 lines. I couldn’t change Amazon’s indents, though I did try.

You will note that the secondary features about the individual authors have been indented more than the novella titles. That helps to make it clearer that they belong with the title above them.

To do this two-level TOC, I formatted the novella titles as Heading 1 and the “about the author” features as Heading 2. Then, when I set the Show Levels choice, I used 2 rather than 1. It would look something like Figure14.

Figure 14

You can have even more levels if you want. Think about what makes the reader’s experience better, though. You want to avoid having a TOC that is too complicated or that involves scrolling down through reams of material to find the link the reader wants to click. In Beach Hut Surprise, for example, adding links to the chapters in the individual novellas made the TOC unwieldy. So the authors all agreed it was best not to include them.
In other words, keep your TOC as simple as you can.

Step 4: modifying a clickable table of contents (TOC)

There’s every chance that you will want to change your TOC after the first time you create it. You may, for example, have second thoughts about your chapters, perhaps taking one out, or dividing an existing chapter into two. No problem provided your revised chapter headings are all formatted with Heading 1 Style.

Go back to your Table of Contents page. Highlight the title: Contents.
Click the References tab.
This time, you don’t click Table of Contents but that handy little option Update Table.

Figure 15

When you click on Update Table, your TOC will be automatically updated with the latest set of Heading 1 Styles. It’s a good idea to check that the revised version is the way you want it, but it should be. On some versions of Word, you may see an option Update Table as a menu item immediately above the title of your TOC (shown as 4 on Figure 15 above). Clicking that works equally well.

And that’s how you do a Table of Contents

Phew! Did you make it this far? I hope so. And I hope that these detailed instructions are helpful when you come to doing your clickable Table of Contents for your next ebook. A good TOC does matter. It needs to work. And, as long as it does, Amazon (or whoever) is less likely to reject your ebook when you upload it.

Been there, done that, got a pile of t-shirts, so I recommend that you try to avoid the pitfalls that can lead to rejection.

Happy Formatting!

Joanna