Should my book use footnotes or endnotes?

Use footnotes when the reader needs the citation or aside right there to follow your argument, common in scholarly nonfiction and heavily sourced memoir. Use endnotes when you want clean, uncluttered pages and the notes are mostly sourcing rather than material the reader must see mid-sentence. Most memoir and general nonfiction lean toward endnotes; most fiction needs neither.

Do footnotes and endnotes work differently in print versus ePub?

In print, footnotes sit at the bottom of the same page and endnotes collect at the end of a chapter or the book, so the reader physically flips pages for endnotes. In a reflowable ePub, that distinction mostly disappears: whichever style you use, the note becomes a tappable link that jumps the reader to the note text and back, since there is no fixed page bottom to anchor a footnote to.

Does fiction ever need footnotes or endnotes?

Rarely. Most novels carry zero notes; anything a character needs to know belongs in the narrative itself. The exceptions are usually intentional style choices, such as a satirical or metafictional aside, and those are the rare cases where a footnote's interruption is the point rather than a flaw.

Do footnotes make my interior layout harder to produce?

Yes, more than endnotes. A footnote has to fit at the bottom of the exact page its reference appears on, which means the layout software must recalculate available space on every page that carries a note, and long notes can force awkward breaks. Endnotes are typeset once as their own back-matter section and never touch the pagination of the chapters they reference.

Author Guides · Interiors & the craft

Footnotes vs Endnotes in a Self-Published Book: Which, When, and How

By Tracy Atkins, founder of BookDesigner.ai and BookDesignTemplates.com · 15+ years of print files, 70,000+ authors · Updated August 15, 2026

The short answer: footnotes sit at the bottom of the same page for a scholarly, right-there feel but add real layout complexity; endnotes gather at the end of a chapter or book for cleaner pages at the cost of the reader flipping to find them. In a reflowable ePub, both become tappable links regardless of which one you chose in print. Fiction rarely needs either; memoir and nonfiction use them often.

What each one actually does to a page

A footnote lives at the bottom of the exact page where its reference mark appears. The reader's eye drops six inches, reads the note, and comes back without losing their place in the chapter. That immediacy is the whole appeal: for scholarly nonfiction, journalism-adjacent memoir, or any book where a citation, a translation, or a wry aside matters to the sentence the reader just finished, a footnote delivers it without a page flip.

An endnote does the same job but defers it. Instead of interrupting the page, the note number sits quietly in the text and the actual note waits in a list at the end of the chapter or, more commonly in self-published books, at the end of the book. The page stays clean. The tradeoff is that a reader who actually wants to check the note has to go find the back matter, note the number, and flip back, which most readers simply do not do unless they are already the kind of reader who cares about sourcing.

Why footnotes are harder to typeset

This is the part authors underestimate. A footnote has to fit on the same page as its reference, which means the layout has to recalculate how much room is left on that page every time a note lands there. A long note, or several notes stacking up on one page, can push body text around, force an awkward page break, or leave a page looking lopsided with a big block of small type at the bottom. Multiply that by a book with notes scattered across most chapters and you have a layout that needs careful, page-by-page attention rather than a single global setting.

Endnotes sidestep all of that. They are typeset once, as their own back-matter section, and they never touch the pagination of the chapters that reference them. If you are the kind of author who wants a designer or a piece of software to be able to move fast and predictably through your interior, endnotes are the friendlier choice. If you have the patience (or a professional formatter) to handle footnotes properly, they are the more reader-considerate choice for material that truly belongs on the page.

How ePub erases the difference

Here is the detail that changes the decision for a lot of authors: in a reflowable ePub, there is no fixed page bottom, because the "page" itself resizes with the reader's font size, screen, and orientation. There is nowhere stable to anchor a footnote the way print does. So regardless of which style you chose in the print interior, the ePub version of both footnotes and endnotes gets built the same way, as a linked reference the reader taps, which jumps them to the note text and then back to where they were reading.

Practically, this means your print choice is really a print-only decision. If your book will exist in both formats (nearly all self-published books do), pick footnotes or endnotes based on what serves the print reading experience, and trust that the ePub conversion will handle the mechanics of linking correctly either way. It also means you should test the actual ePub file rather than assume: a badly converted manuscript can produce dead links or notes that dump into the wrong spot, which is a formatting bug, not a footnotes-versus-endnotes issue.

Which genres actually need notes

Genre / category	Typical need	Common choice
Fiction (novels, story collections)	Rarely any notes at all	None; anything the reader needs goes in the narrative
Memoir	Occasional sourcing, timeline clarifications, or context	Endnotes, for clean pages
General nonfiction	Citations, further reading, definitions	Endnotes, sometimes footnotes for key terms
Scholarly or heavily sourced nonfiction	Frequent citations the reader may want mid-sentence	Footnotes
Satirical or metafictional fiction	Notes as a deliberate stylistic device	Footnotes, used for effect rather than sourcing

Most novels genuinely need zero notes of either kind. If a character has to explain a historical fact or a piece of jargon, the strongest craft move is almost always to fold it into dialogue or narration rather than kick the reader out of the story to a footnote. The exceptions, where a footnote itself becomes part of the voice or the joke, are rare and intentional, and those authors already know they are doing it on purpose.

Memoir and general nonfiction are where the real decision lives. If your notes are mostly "here's where that quote came from" and you do not expect most readers to check them in the moment, endnotes keep your pages looking like a trade book rather than a dissertation. If your notes carry material the reader benefits from seeing right when they hit the reference mark, a definition, a translation, a short aside that changes how the next sentence reads, footnotes earn their layout cost.

A practical way to decide

Count how many notes you actually have. A handful of notes across an entire book rarely justifies the layout overhead of footnotes; endnotes handle a light number effortlessly.
Ask whether the note changes how the reader understands the very sentence it is attached to. If yes, that is footnote material. If it is just a source citation, that is endnote material.
Consider who is doing your interior layout. If you or your formatter are comfortable with page-by-page footnote spacing, footnotes are workable. If you want a faster, more predictable production process, endnotes reduce risk.
Remember the ePub reader experiences either choice as a link, so do not let ePub concerns drive the print decision. Test the ePub separately once the interior is built.

Or let the layout decisions be someone else's job.

BookDesignerAI's interior package delivers a press-ready PDF, a properly linked ePub, and an editable DOCX master, with footnote or endnote placement handled correctly by Cantos, our book-design AI, whichever style suits your manuscript. Start with proof: upload your manuscript and get a free 30-page professionally typeset preview of your own book. No credit card, and nothing is ever trained on your work.

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