Exploring Booktype: A complete e-book publishing environment

Publishing with Booktype

When the book is finished, you can publish it in a variety of formats targeting different platforms (Figure 8). To generate a publishable file, open the book for editing and switch to the Publish tab. Assuming that you want to publish the book as an e-book, select the Ebook option and press the Settings button next to it. This step opens the Ebook Settings dialog where you can adjust the default options (Figure 9). Here, you can pick the target platform, add a book cover, adjust the default font settings, and specify custom styles. The latter option gives you complete control over the book's styling and appearance. In fact, you can override all default settings with custom CSS by ticking the appropriate button.

Figure 9: Adjusting e-book settings.
Figure 8: Booktype can generate books in several popular formats.

To get the most out of this functionality, however, you need to have a working knowledge of CSS. When you're done tweaking the settings, press the Submit button to save the changes and return to the Publish section. Press Publish this book to generate an EPUB file.

In addition to publishing functionality, Booktype has a hidden export feature, which can come in handy if you want to keep backup copies of your book projects outside Booktype. To export a book project, you need to modify the book's URL. For example, the export URL of the http://username.booktype.pro/my-book/ link will be http://username.booktype.pro/export/my-book/export/.

When you type the export URL into the address bar of your browser and hit Enter, Booktype automatically generates a ZIP archive containing an HTML file for each chapter, all of the images used in the book, and a JSON file with Booktype-related data. Note, though, that although you can export any book project using the described hack, there is no direct way to import the backup copy back into Booktype.

Final Word

Booktype is probably overkill for working on a single-author book, but the application's writing, editing, and collaboration capabilities can be indispensable for managing complex book projects involving multiple contributors. Using the Booktype Pro service, you can start using the platform in a matter of minutes. If you prefer to host Booktype on your own server, you can do that, too.

The Author

Dmitri Popov has been writing exclusively about Linux and open source software for many years, and his articles have appeared in Danish, British, US, German, Spanish, and Russian magazines and websites. Dmitri is an amateur photographer, and he writes about open source photography tools on his Scribbles and Snaps blog at http://scribblesandsnaps.com.

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