PressBooks is a simple book publishing tool that makes it easy for authors and editorial teams to generate clean, well-formatted books in multiple outputs: .epub, print-ready PDF, InDesign-ready XML, and of course HTML. We’re in public beta, meaning PressBooks is good enough for professional book production, but we’re still improving things.
You can see what PressBooks does by checking out this short demo slideshow, or sign up here: PressBooks.
The first book published using the PressBooks platform is Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto, published by O’Reilly Media, and co-edited by PressBooks founder Hugh McGuire and publishing thinker, Brian O’Leary. You can buy the ebook, or read it online for free.
Who Should Use PressBooks?
* Authors and Very Small Publishers can use PressBooks for free – we make great ebooks and typeset print books.
* Big and Small Publishers can use PressBooks as a lightweight, but extremely powerful (XML) workflow tool to output ebooks and typeset print books, for free. Contact us to ask us about pricing for custom epub designs & print design templates.
Articles, Resources, and More Information
Here are a few resources, articles, interviews etc that help explain PressBooks, what we’re doing, and why.
* Hugh McGuire on the Future of Digital Publishing and PressBooks, Video interview with Chris Brogan.
* Web-first workflows let publishers focus on the stuff that really matters, from O’Reilly.
* The Beauty of Web-first Workflows: Slides from Books and Browsers 2011.
* The Beauty of Web-first Workflows: Video from Books and Browsers 2011.
* “Open, Webby Book Publishing”: Article about the genesis of PressBooks in O’Reilly Radar.
* “Book Oven to PressBooks”: Article about startup life in NextMontreal.
Who is PressBooks?
Right now PressBooks is: Hugh McGuire (ideas), Janina Szkut (coding), Sonia Gaballa (Design & HTML), Artom Lifshitz (Systems), and Ned Zimmerman (WordPress plugin wrangling).
We’ve also had help from: Marie-Eve Belanger (design), Patrick Tanguay (integration), Pier-Luc Petitclerc (WordPress wrangling), Christine Prefontaine (direction & enthusiasm), John Maxwell (prototyping, inspiration, and IDML transforms), Kirk Biglione (ideas & encouragement), Brian O’Leary (sage advice & pints), Laura Dawson (metadata guidance & giddy excitement), John Rankin (brilliant HTML–>LaTeX tools), Don Linn (sage advice of all kinds), Richard Nash (indie publishing advice), Gene Quinn (start-up advice).
PressBooks Demo Deck