Independent Study: PressBooks

This is a pretty rad publishing tool. In a few easy steps, you can create a book and export it in various ebook formats, PDF, and others. It takes just a little bit more work than managing a blog, and you can send your complete book directly to your friends' inboxes or ereaders.

Last night was our first use of PressBooks. It took less than an hour to create a foreword, introduction, and five chapters. We were then able to send it to Dad's Kindle and make changes as we needed. It's simple to then export the newest version. We're fans.

PressBooks uses the power of WordPress, and lets you create a website for your book that is essentially a blog. But being able to publish takes this platform so much further.

Here's what I just found on the blog on PressBooks.com.

"Three Design Principles underpinning PressBooks

1. PressBooks should be easy for anyone to use (even me).
2. Input text once / output in every format: EPUB, MOBI, WEB AND PRINT.
3. The web will win in the end (and future-proofing your workflow now is a good idea)."

Exactly. At least, the first two points. It is so convenient that we can send our document to both Kindle and nook users, and those who are content to read a PDF.

You can use one of their themes for the design of your book.

It will automatically generate a table of contents.

You can update as many times as you need/want to.

It's just great.

We still have some experimenting to do, but so far we are very pleased with the simplicity of PressBooks.