In the rune Studio workflow for a KDP EPUB, table-of-contents entries take their labels from heading text in the manuscript. When an entry is too long to scan comfortably, edit the heading rather than the generated table of contents. This workflow does not include a separate edit inside the generated table of contents.
This article covers how to write headings so the table of contents reads well. The distinction between the two tables of contents, and choosing which chapters appear, are covered separately.
The table of contents is a copy of your headings
An EPUB needs navigation for readers, but production systems can build it in different ways. rune Studio generates it from manuscript headings and uses the heading line as the entry label.
I verified this on the rune Studio development build. Inspecting a manuscript beginning with a chapter heading recognised that heading on the first line, and exporting placed the same text in the table of contents.
So what the table of contents looks like is decided by how you write headings.
How people usually write headings
Fiction tends toward a chapter number alone, or a number paired with a title.
Non-fiction tends toward writing the subject directly, such as "Choosing an encoding".
Three heading habits that hurt the table of contents
Some problems only appear once the headings are lined up.
One: headings that are too long. A long heading may be readable in the body yet slow to scan when many entries are listed together. A label such as "Chapter 3: Choosing an encoding, and what to do when characters cannot be converted" makes its subject harder to pick out quickly, regardless of how a particular screen wraps it.
Two: headings that are only numbers. "Chapter One", "Chapter Two" tells a reader nothing. The only handle they have for choosing a chapter is a number.
Three: headings at inconsistent granularity. If chapter one's heading names a broad topic and chapter two's names a specific procedure, the table of contents does not convey the shape of the book.
And none of these look like problems while you are writing the body. They surface when the headings are listed, which means reviewing all of them after the draft is done.
In rune Studio, editing a heading changes the table of contents
rune Studio has an operation that turns a line into a heading at a chosen level, which I verified.
Every export regenerates the table of contents from the headings as they stand. Edit a heading, export, and the table of contents follows. There is no contents-side edit.
The table of contents can be previewed before exporting
You can check the resulting arrangement without exporting. Doing so returned the chapter names as a list, each flagged for whether it appears in the table of contents.
That avoids finishing the book before fixing the table of contents. Checking as each chapter is finished lets you fix them as you go.
Your headings can be listed
Inspecting a manuscript returns its headings with their level and line number. Running that across every chapter shows length and granularity variation at a glance — you compare the headings without rereading the body.
Heading depth in the table of contents can be limited
Fine-grained headings make a long table of contents. rune Studio has a setting that limits how deep a heading level appears. Keep fine headings in the body and show only major ones in the table of contents.
Who this suits, and who is fine without it
It suits practical and technical books with many sections. The more headings, the more visible the granularity variation.
A novel with three or four chapters barely needs this. A number plus a title is enough.
Scope note: what was verified is that headings are recognised, that they appear in the table of contents, and that a depth setting exists. How a given device wraps the table of contents is outside this.
Summary
- rune Studio builds table-of-contents labels from manuscript headings; edit the heading, not the generated table of contents
- Overlong headings, number-only headings, and inconsistent granularity all hurt the table of contents
- rune Studio regenerates the table of contents on every export, so heading edits propagate
- Headings can be listed with level and line number, so you can compare them without rereading
For a first step, write out every heading in your book and read the list. If a reader could infer the book from that alone, your table of contents is finished.
See the current product scope on the Rune Studio product page.
