Some authors choose to include back-of-book dictionaries (often paired with character glossaries or other encyclopedia-like entries) with their novels. This is more common with epic novels than ones intended as a lighter read, but any book could have such a dictionary if the author wanted it badly enough. Such dictionaries may be useful to provide further information for readers who are curious to learn more about an invented language, and sometimes it’s fun for the author to make such a thing.

Most books with fantasy languages do not include in-book dictionaries. There are good reasons for this, some of which I’ve included below:

1. Creating a back-of-book dictionary can take a lot of time and effort.
2. Large back-of-book dictionaries can make a book more expensive to print, but provide material many readers may not find increases the value of the book. (Not an issue with ebooks.)
3. Back-of-book dictionaries add to the page count of the book; readers who don’t know about the dictionary may feel cheated when the book ends far sooner than they expected, judging from the number of pages left in the book (or the “percentage read” bar, if an ebook).
4. On the other hand, readers who might be otherwise interested in a back-of-book dictionary might not know about it until they’ve finished reading and gotten to the dictionary, which defeats the point of them using it as a reference.

I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t do a back-of-book dictionary if it interests you; now that you know, you find your own solutions to these common pitfalls. I do recommend lean dictionaries, as they accomplish the most while risking the least.

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_{Copyright © 2023 by David Ludlow}