About Pressbooks

Export All the File Formats You Need to Publish

Pressbooks is online software that enables authors and publishers to create well-designed file formats needed to publish a book:

• PDF (for print or print on demand)
• EPUB (for Apple iBooks, Nook, Kobo and most other ebook platforms)
• MOBI (for Kindle)
• Web (private or public)

All these export files are produced using templates that are optimized to look great on all kinds of devices (Kindles, iPhones, iPads and Android devices), as well as good old-fashioned print pages.

The Web

Pressbooks also produces a web version of every book, which can be kept private, used for collaboration between authors and editors, or made publicly available. Leveraging that web version of their books, some publishers are using the Pressbooks catalog feature to give readers access to samples of their books.

Pressbooks is built using WordPress as a development framework. Most users of Pressbooks use Pressbooks.com (though the more adventurous can use the open source plugin with their own WordPress multisite installation).

Why You Should Use Pressbooks

Pressbooks is used by small and medium-sized publishers, as well as individual authors.

The advantages of Pressbooks include:

• simple, familiar interface
• professionally-designed outputs, without complex software
• wide and growing selection of free themes, to suit many kinds of books
• unlimited ability to edit, update, and (re)export books
• ability to collaborate with others (for instance a publisher, editor and author can all have access to the book)
• daily backups
• and more!

About This Guide

This guide is a work in progress. It is meant to be an evolving handbook for how to use Pressbooks. It is hoped that it also will be useful for anyone doing ebook production, explaining how we deal with various styling problems across ebook platforms.

You can find this Guide’s Table of Contents … let us know if we are missing anything.

How You Can Help

Here are some ways you can help:

• suggest a chapter not found in the table of contents
• volunteer to write a chapter
• volunteer to help with editing
• volunteer to do something we haven’t thought of.

In all cases, you can get in touch by:

• sending us an email at support@pressbooks.com
• pinging us on twitter: @pressbooks