Book Starter Boilerplate

This is a boilerplate that you can use to self-publish books on Epub. In addition to that, you'll get outputs in all possible formats that you can distribute anywhere, including the Amazon Kindle.

Usage

Check out this intro video to learn how to use the tool

Requirements

• node > 0.12.0 (you use nvm to manage your node versions)

• Electron-pdf, bookly: npm i electron-pdf bookly2 -g

• Pandoc

• Amazon KindleGen

• Python (for some pandoc filters)

• PhantomJS (for making pdfs from html chapters):

  # Windows (MSVC 2013), 64-bit, for Windows Vista or later, bundles VC++ Runtime 2013
  $ curl -L http://astefanutti.github.io/decktape/downloads/phantomjs-msvc2013-win64.exe -o bin\phantomjs.exe
  # Mac OS X (Cocoa), 64-bit, for OS X 10.6 or later
  $ curl -L http://astefanutti.github.io/decktape/downloads/phantomjs-osx-cocoa-x86-64 -o bin/phantomjs
  # Linux (CentOS 6), 64-bit
  $ curl -L http://astefanutti.github.io/decktape/downloads/phantomjs-linux-centos6-x86-64 -o bin/phantomjs
  # Linux (CentOS 7), 64-bit
  $ curl -L http://astefanutti.github.io/decktape/downloads/phantomjs-linux-centos7-x86-64 -o bin/phantomjs
  # Linux (Debian 8), 64-bit
  $ curl -L http://astefanutti.github.io/decktape/downloads/phantomjs-linux-debian8-x86-64 -o bin/phantomjs
  

• LaTeX (for building pdf) or basic tex (mac)

• xelatex (might not need it for windows)

Configuration Files

• Update the content of book.txt, to include the title and the author. This is for LeanPub.
• In the book-lean.txt file include the chapters that you want to be included one chapter per line. This is for LeanPub publishing chapters.
• Update the input, output, and output file names in config.js. This is for Bookly.

Building the book

• ./full-build.sh: runs all the scripts. Take a look at the script for more details.
  • ./build.sh: just builds the book in different formats and put them in the output folder.
  • ./lean.sh: this script builds the book for LeanPub