17May / 2013

New Feature: Import from WordPress (and EPUB)

We’ve just added Import* to PressBooks, starting with: WordPress XML, and EPUB. More import formats are on the way. Below, I will show you how the import from WordPress works (EPUB is the same process, just a different file source).

Step 1: Get your WordPress XML file from your blog

In your WordPress admin, go to:  Tools –> Export

(found at: ~/wp-admin/export)

Export the content you want into an XML file.

Exporting your WordPress XML File

Exporting your WordPress XML File

 Step 2: Go to PressBooks –> Utilities –> Import

In PressBooks, go to the left menu: Utilities –> Import.

Utilities --> Import

Utilities –> Import

 

Step 3: Select your file type, choose your file, and upload

On the import page:

  1. Decide what file type you wish to import (WordPress XML/WXR or EPUB)
  2. Choose the file on your harddrive
  3. Upload the file
PressBooks Import Select File & Type

PressBooks Import Select File & Type

 

Step 4:  Choose Chapters, Frontmatter, and Backmatter

Now choose which “chapters” you want to import (or select all).

Decide whether the imports will be frontmatter, chapters or backmatter

NOTES ON STEP 4:

a) you cannot undo your chapter/frontmatter/backmatter choices once you have importer

b) You’ll need to edit front- and backmatter to make sure they have the right “types” associated with each one.

Step 5: Press “Start”

 

PressBooks Import Start

PressBooks Import Start

 

Step 6: Voila:

And voila! Here is your blog, now a “book” in PressBooks.

PressBooks Import: Voila!

PressBooks Import: Voila!

 

 

Notes:

  1. Thanks to Brad Payne of BC Campus and Michael Geilser for contributions to this new feature
  2. Currently, images from WordPress files are not pulled directly into your PressBooks book — we only point to the images in your old blog. However, we do pull the images into your EPUB and PDF exports.
  3. Your chapters are imported with default “DRAFT” status. You’ll have to “publish” each one for the moment. We’ll add user control for this setting, eventually.
  4. We will be adding other import file sources (eg. docx) in the coming months, and we welcome (enthusiastically!) contributions to our open source code.
  5. *We had previous version of an import tool, built by Stephanie Leary. We disabled that when we rolled out PressBooks 2.0 in February 2013. This new importer used the previous tool as a starting point, but has made some significant changes.

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09May / 2013

New Feature: MS Word Footnote converter

We have a few clients who make heavy duty academic texts on PressBooks, and we’ve made their life easier with a new MS Word footnote converter. The first “in-production” book they did with us had ~100 footnotes in every chapter: getting those footnotes out of MS Word format and into PressBooks format was a bit of a pain.

We now have a little tool that will do this for you…:

  1. Paste your Word doc/chapter with footnotes into PressBooks
  2. In the Visual Editor, find the little “window” icon beside “FN”
  3. Click that… footnotes should be converted

See below:

PressBooks MS Word Footnote Converter

PressBooks MS Word Footnote Converter

PressBooks is a simple book production tool that makes ebooks & PDFs … Perhaps you’d like to make your own books?

Contact us if you run into any troubles: support@pressbooks.com

 

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08May / 2013

New Feature: PressBooks custom styles

PressBooks has a number of custom styles we use … bookish kinds of formats and design elements. We’ve just implemented a new feature: a style dropdown in the visual editor that will allow you to easily select text and apply these styles. Styles should be applied in all formats: PDF, EPUB, MOBI and Web, and all themes.

Currently the style menu supports:

  • Indent (will force the paragraph to indent, no matter what other rules would otherwise apply)
  • Hanging Indent (will make a hanging indent)
  • No Indent (will force the paragraph to not indent, no matter what other rules would otherwise apply)
  • Text Box (surrounds the text in a textbox)
  • Text Box (Shaded) (surrounds the text in a shaded textbox)
  • Text Box (Caption) (styling for a textbox caption)
  • Pullquote (pulls out and highlights a piece of text)
  • Pullquote (Left) (floats your pullquote left)
  • Pullquote (Right) (floats your pullquote right)

We will be adding more styles as time goes on. If you need something, or something isn’t working as expected, can you let us know? Support@pressbooks.com

See below for how to use the Styles menu:

  • Make sure you are on the Visual Editor tab
  • Make sure you are displaying the Kitchen Sink toolbar, click here
  • Highlight the text you want the style applied to
  • Click the Style dropdown, and select the style you wish to apply
PressBooks Style Tool

PressBooks Style Tool

 

PressBooks is a simple book production tool that makes ebooks & PDFs … Perhaps you’d like to make your own books?

Contact us if you run into any troubles: support@pressbooks.com

 

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06May / 2013

PressBooks in German and Estonian

PressBooks has added a couple of new languages: German (thanks Ron!) and Estonian (thanks Karol Kallas!).

If you would like to improve either translations, please contact us, or fork the files on github:

First, to change the PressBooks User Interface to a new language:

1. Login to PressBooks, and Edit Profile

Edit Profile

Edit Profile

2/3. Scroll Down and select your Language, then click on Update Profile

Select Language

Select Language

And Voila!

PressBooks Japanese

PressBooks Japanese

Now if you’d like to modify your EXPORTS as well …

4. Go to “Book Information”

Select Book Information

Select Book Information

5. Finally, choose your Export language. If supported, Exports will modify various text, such as Contents

Select Your Export Language

Select Your Export Language

IMPORTANT CAVEAT:

All of these translation features are FIRST DRAFTS. They all need improvement. You can find existing PressBooks translations on Github, please fork & improve. Please contact us if you would like to help: support@pressbooks.com.

 

PressBooks is a simple book production tool that makes ebooks & PDFs … Perhaps you’d like to make your own books?

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23Apr / 2013

PressBooks Design Principles & Objectives

I gave a presentation yesterday, at the Berlin Publisher Forum, talking about the design principles behind PressBooks, and our objectives (see slides below).

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).

Three Objectives for PressBooks (or, what shall we do with our Design Principles?)

  1. (Short-term) Allow anyone to make a beautiful book.
  2. (Medium term) Make PressBooks the best book publishing tool in the world.
  3. (Long term) Bring the stuff of books onto web, into the network.

And … the slides:

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21Apr / 2013

From a user: “I will be using this pressbooks account to allow 5th grade students to create poetry ebooks.”

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12Apr / 2013

Video Tutorial: Build your book with pressbooks.com (from BookMoxy.com)

It’s nice when users of PressBooks do things like this: make a video tutorial for using PressBooks! Mat McLeod of BookMoxy.com, a site that “offers free tutorials and articles showing step by step how to get your manuscript published on your own using various methods,” did just that. Here it is:

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10Apr / 2013

Michael Montgomery’s PressBooks Presentation at WordCamp Miami

It’s a very exciting thing when people we’ve never met start doing presentations about PressBooks at conferences … with no incentive other than that they are happy with their experience with PressBooks, and want to share that with other people.

Michael Montgomery just did such a presentation at WordCamp Miami. Here is the deck:

And here is a video of the event:



Video streaming by Ustream

Thanks Michael!

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09Apr / 2013

PressBooks: BookBaby, Custom CSS, Languages, GitHub, Events

Here’s our latest newsletter:

We hope the writing is going well, we’ve been working hard at PressBooks trying to make publishing easier. Some quick news from us:

Sell Your Book Through BookBaby
Would you like to get your book into the Kindle store, Apple iBooks, Etc? Our partner BookBaby can do it for $99 (10% discount for PressBooks users), you keep 100% of royalties. More info.

Customize the Look of Your Books
Do you want to customize PressBooks export themes? Now you can, using CSS. More info.

Languages: Português, 日本語, Français, Español, 中國(繁體)
We’ve added new languages to the PressBooks interface, including: Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, French and Japanese. All of our non-English language interfaces are works-in-progress. Please contact us if:
a) you can help improve our existing language/translations
b) you would like to translate PressBooks into another language for us.
More info.

PressBooks is on Github
Are you a developer and want to experiment with the PressBooks plugin? We’ve made it easier, we’re now on GitHub. More info.

Upcoming Events & Travel: Toronto, Berlin, Ottawa
We will be present/speaking at the following events in the next few weeks, please contact me if you’d like to meet up:

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08Apr / 2013

PressBooks Goes International, now in: Português, 日本語, Français, Español, 中國(繁體)

PressBooks has gone international! Or at least, we have started to. Our mission is: to make it easy for every writer and every publisher in the universe to make beautiful ebooks, print books, and webbooks  – no matter what language they write in, read in, or speak.

To that end, we’ve enlisted some friends and supporters to help make PressBooks’ user interface, and book outputs more global in nature. We now offer (alpha! needs improvement) PressBooks in the following languages:

  • Português/Portuguese [thanks to Israel Cerfin]
  • 日本語/Japanese [thanks to Daisuke Muro]
  • Français/French [thanks to Macina]
  • Español/Spanish [thanks to Silvia]
  • 中國(繁體)/Chinese (Traditional)  [thanks to Arik]

Here’s how you use PressBooks in different languages (for now … we’ll improve this down the road).

 

First, to change the PressBooks User Interface to a new language:

1. Login to PressBooks, and Edit Profile

Edit Profile

Edit Profile

2/3. Scroll Down and select your Language, then click on Update Profile

Select Language

Select Language

And Voila!

PressBooks Japanese

PressBooks Japanese

Now if you’d like to modify your EXPORTS as well …

4. Go to “Book Information”

Select Book Information

Select Book Information

5. Finally, choose your Export language. If supported, Exports will modify various text, such as Contents

Select Your Export Language

Select Your Export Language

IMPORTANT CAVEAT:

All of these translation features are FIRST DRAFTS. They all need improvement. Please contact us if you would like to help: support@pressbooks.com.

 

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