Does Your Novel Need a Table of Contents?

From our own reading, most of us know that some paperback and hardcover novels have a table of contents page in the front and some don’t. Lurking online, I perceive a widespread notion that tables of contents are old-fashioned and pointless for fiction. There’s also fear that a contents page wastes valuable marketing space in online “see inside” previews, preventing readers from getting to the good stuff that will tempt them to buy.

Why then do some best-selling, award-winning novels have a table of contents, sometimes several pages long? As you’ll see, sometimes it makes sense.