It sounds as though you built everything into one book. If
you have your default topic in that book and "Autosynchronize TOC"
the book will open - only enough to show the default topic, but
that should give your users a little better picture of the TOC
being a table of contents with books and topics.
Another option is to restructure your TOC so that several
books show, and perhaps have few topics outside of the books.
John