I found a topic on this from many years ago, and I was wondering if this is something that’s been updated in more recent versions. When compiling my project into an epub format, the automatically generated table of contents is placed before the title page (most books I’ve seen have the title page first and I would prefer mine to appear this way). Is there a way to reposition this so the title page shows first? Do I have to create my own custom table of contents to make it appear where I want it?
The generated ToC is for e-readers and should not be designed. Deleting it from the spine is an option when you add your own XHTML ToC, that can be styled and placed anywhere you like in the e-book.
Know that KDP insists/require that the Toc comes first. (If I am not mistaken.)
Tip : To avoid interrupting the customer’s reading progress, we recommend placing it at the front of the book.
What Amazon is recommending here is a general placement somewhere in the early front matter, as opposed to the bad practice of trying to hide the ToC at the end of the spine. This was a tactic being used (more in the early days) to fulfil the recommendation of having one, while hoping people don’t notice it.
The problem with that practice, and what they refer to as ‘avoiding interruption’, is how their cloud sync system marked the furthest place you have read to as the point where other devices should open to, and as well potentially triggering the-end conditions, such as marking the book as read, and presenting a review and more-by-author panel.
Whether the ToC is before or after the first few bits that most people skip past anyway, does not interfere with what they are cautioning against. I can think of no reason to avoid a traditional placement of the ToC, directly before the introduction/preface/first chapter.
General design practices aside, yes, you’re supposed to have ways of doing this, both with the automatically generated one, and by nature of where you place a custom one. But without them, it remains necessary to move the ToC HTML section in an editor, post-compile.