Support Guides

Pressbooks is an authoring and formatting platform for books of all types: textbooks, monographs, novels, manuals, and beyond! It covers all aspects from start to finish of creating a book. Your book creation process will look something like this:

1. Sign-up for Pressbooks. You will have the option to create a book right away. If you are affiliated with an institution that has access to Pressbooks, speak with your network manager. If you do not know whether or not your institution has Pressbooks email support@pressbooks.com and we’ll check for you.
2. Add book information. You can include a title, author, language, book description, and more!
3. Start building your book by writing, formatting, and adding media. Use the Authoring Dashboard to start writing.
4. Choose a theme for your book. There are 21 different themes with different typefaces, colors, and styles to explore.
5. Export your book in one of the many formats we support! With PDF, ePUB, and a web version of your book, your book can be shared and sold online, or sent to a printer.

Keep in mind that nothing on Pressbooks is irreversible. Everything, from the book information to the theme can always be modified! Feel free to explore all of the options you have for your book. You can read more in depth about kicking off your Pressbooks project. You can also start with our quick “Introduction to Pressbooks” video or attend one of our free training webinars to learn more about using Pressbooks to publish your next book project.

Start by searching our user guide or YouTube channel to try to find an answer to your question in our existing documentation.

If you don’t find what you’re looking for there, you can post your question on our community forum in the hopes that there are other users who know the answer.

If you’re using an enterprise hosted Pressbooks instance, you can always contact the network managers who administer for your Pressbooks installation. If you’re an individual using the self-publishing platform we host at pressbooks.pub, you can purchase a premium support subscription to get personalized support from our team via email.

Learn more about our specific support policies to find out what’s available to you depending on the type of network your account is set up on.

Pressbooks is openly licensed software, which means anyone can inspect and improve the code. If you’ve experienced what you think is a bug in our software or have an idea to help us make Pressbooks better, please file a ticket in our main GitHub repository.

To get a physical copy of a book you’ve published with Pressbooks, you’ll need to select a print-on-demand service and share the print PDF export files you’ve created using Pressbooks. See our user guide chapters on producing PDF exports and distributing your book.

There are a number of well-regarded OER repositories as any Google search will reveal. But have a look at the Pressbooks Directory! The Directory is a searchable online catalog listing all publicly available Pressbooks books. Everyone has access to these materials, regardless of whether you already use Pressbooks or whether your institution has a Pressbooks network.

And if you do use Pressbooks, it’s simple to clone, copy, adapt, or remix content from existing Pressbooks OER materials into your own new book.

You do! You own and are responsible for your content. Pressbooks takes no rights or royalties for the content created with our software. It’s up to you to decide what you’d like to do with your book, how you want to license your work and make it available to the world.

Contact your network manager (if your institution uses Pressbooks) or visit our community forum.