btbytes / pandoc-ebook-template

Pandoc skeleton repo for creating ebooks out of Pandoc Markdown

Pandoc Markdown ebook template

Forked from Source on 2023-08-24.

This project defines a skeleton repo for creating ebooks out of Pandoc Markdown. Pandoc is a great tool for writing ebooks with simple to moderately complex formatting, but I've found that in practice, creating an EPUB isn't quite as simple as just running pandoc -o book.epub book.md.

The author of Pandoc has written a short tutorial for creating EPUB files with Pandoc. This repo just expands on MacFarlane's tutorial a bit and wraps things up in a Makefile.

Installing and running

1. If you have not already done so, install:
   • git
   • make (OS X users should install XCode and download the command line tools.)
   • pandoc
   • latex (OS X users should probably install MacTex.)
2. Clone this repo with git.
3. From the top of the project, type make book or simply, make. This generates three versions of the sample book in a build/ directory.

Replacing the sample material

Edit these files:

ch01.md and ch02.md

Replace the dummy text with your own. You can add, subtract, or rename these *.md chapters as you please, but you must edit the CHAPTERS variable in the Makefile accordingly.

images/cover.jpg

Replace this with your own cover image or delete it entirely.

Makefile

• Change BOOKNAME to something appropriate for your book. This determines your book's filename.

• Change CHAPTERS to a space separated list of Pandoc Markdown chapters, in the order in which you want them to appear.

• Change COVER_IMAGE. You might want to move your cover image elsewhere, or use a different file format such as PNG.

  If you don't want a cover image, delete this variable and the --epub-cover-image option in the EPUB target.

• (Optional) Change LATEX_CLASS. The default of report handles multi-chapter books pretty well, and uses the same template for even and odd page numbers. However, you are free to substitute in any other LaTeX document class. For example, book provides a left-side/right-side template that is suitable for print, and article is good for shorter manuscripts (short stories, technical briefs).

title.txt

Replace the contents of this file with the real manuscript title and author name.

metadata.xml

Replace with your actual copyright statement, language, and any other Dublin Core metadata you wish to provide.