Pressbooks

Creating Content

Creating Chapters and Parts

The "Organize" tab is where you will create new chapters, parts, and content.

There are three preset parts in your book: Front Matter, Main Body, and Back Matter. There is also an automatic glossary function. Front and Back Matter are usually used for additional information like prefaces, indexes, or acknowledgements. The Main Body is where you will create the bulk of your chapters. You can create as many additional parts or sections in the Main Body as you need.

You can add new content using the buttons at the top of the page near the book's title, or the "Add" buttons found in each section.

Once materials are created, you can organize them by dragging and dropping the chapters into a different order, or using the "Move Up/Down" option when you hover over a chapter title. Note: Main Body content cannot be moved into Front or Back Matter, or visa versa.

Editor

Once you have created a chapter, you will see a page where you can add a title and create content. You can also add chapter-level metadata and adjust the visibility settings for the chapter.

The editor is very similar to many online blogs and content creation tools (if you've used WordPress it will be very familiar). The toolbar on the editor has many of the same functions as Microsoft Word or other standard word processing software. Some specific features for Pressbooks include:

• Anchors: This tool looks like a small banner or flag and allows you to create unique tags for specific parts of your book. This will allow you to create links to specific parts of your book.
• Textboxes: This drop down includes preset text boxes you can add to your chapter. This option will change with your theme.
• LaTeX: If you have a small amount of LaTeX to use in your book, you can toggle LaTeX rendering on and off with this button.
• GL: Use this tool to insert glossary terms.

Above the toolbar you will also see some additional tools:

• Add Media: Inserts files from your media library or computer.
• Add H5P: Inserts H5P activities if you have created them.
• Tabs for Visual or Text: The visual editor is the standard editor you see. What you create in the visual editor will look nearly identical to the public side of your book. The Text editor allows you to see the basic code for your chapter and manually change or fix the code. The visual editor is recommended for most users.

Importing Content

Pressbooks allows you to import content from five different file types:

• EPUB (.epub)
• Microsoft Word (.docx)
• OpenOffice (.odt)
• Pressbooks/Wordpress XML (.wxr or .xml)
• Webpage/Pressbooks webbook (.html or URL)

Once you have uploaded the file, you may have the option to import the content as multiple parts or chapters. This feature is only available if you have formatted headings and sections in your original format. It is highly recommended to do this so it does not import all content as a single chapter.

Most formats do not import exactly the way they appear in the original format. For example, the visual math editor in Microsoft Word will not directly import into Pressbooks.  Expect to do some review and clean up of content after importing materials into your book.

Additional Resources