Recto and verso

Recto and verso name the two faces of a leaf in a bound item: recto is the "right" or "front" side and verso the "left" or "back" side, the faces produced "when text is written or printed on a leaf of paper." In a left-to-right book the recto is the right-hand page of an open spread. By book publishing convention, "the first page of a book, and sometimes of each section and chapter of a book, is a recto page," and "all recto pages will have odd numbers and all verso pages will have even numbers." KDP's front matter rules, as cited in the print-ready PDF guide, place the title page on a right-facing page and the copyright page on the first left-facing page after it.

For the author, recto is the logic behind the right-facing-page rules: front matter and back matter placements follow it, odd page numbers land on the right. The facing-page flourish is the frontispiece.