It's a recommendation to publish the module before closing body tag, it's not a must! You can publish the module where ever you want to as long as you have that module position inside your template. As a Joomla cms administrator, you probably know, that you can list the module positions inside your template in the backend of Joomla by choosing Site > Preview > Inline with positions. Those are the positions your template holds. You shouldn't publish any modules to other places than the ones, you actually have inside template. All templates doesn't have all the default places, such as top, footer, debug, left, right, user3, user1 etc.

You can add as many positions as you like by yourself with the Joomla backend by choosing Site > template manager > module positions. Type your position name in the list. You add the position to template by choosing site > template manager - site templates: select your template and choose edit html. You can add the positions like 'mynewposition' by adding the following code, where you want the module to appear. 

For more information, please refer Joomla.org.