38 PDF Export & Options
Pressbooks outputs PDFs of your book, with different professional template designs for print and digital distribution. In this chapter we’ll go over:
- How to export your book as a PDF
- Choosing a Theme
- Pressbooks PDF export options, and what they are for
- Figuring out: where is my cover?
- A showcase selection of PDF templates
1. How to Export a PDF of your book
Exporting a PDF of your book
- Once you have entered all your text, click on “Export” in the left sidebar menu.
- You will land on the export page.
- Select PDF for print and/or digital distribution.
- Press “Export Your Book”
- Click on the exported PDF file that appears to download it to your computer
Choosing between PDF for Print and Digital
Pressbooks now allows you to export PDFs specifically for print or digital distribution. The print option meets the highest standards for print on demand suppliers like IngramSpark. The digital option is still suitable for print, but doesn’t conform to the same standards, so may be flagged by some print on demand suppliers.
Note that the difference between the digital and print PDF is that the digital PDF supports internal and external links, making the document easier to navigate when viewed from a digital device. Links will be highlighted in blue and underlined in the digital PDF export.
Digital PDFs also support transparent images, while print PDFs do not.
2. The Theme gives style instructions to the Pressbooks output (how chapter openings look, what fonts are used etc). Choosing a Theme will determine the “look and feel” of all outputs — EPUB, MOBI, PDF and web. To choose your theme:
- Click on Appearance in the left sidebar menu.
- Choose the Theme you want, and click “Activate.”
3. Selecting Your Export Options
Once you have selected your Theme, you can further tweak the outputs by choosing various options.
- Click on Appearance in the left sidebar menu.
- Select Theme Options.
3a. Global Options
Global options govern all your outputs (EPUB, MOBI and PDF). Currently, you may:
- Decide whether to display part and chapter numbers or to omit them.
- Enable or disable a two-level table of contents (TOC).
- Display or remove the copyright licence.
- Add fonts to support languages that require special characters beyond those included by default.
3b. PDF Options
There are (currently) ten PDF options:
Page Size
We currently have various page sizes to choose from:
- Digest (5.5 x 8.5″): typical paperback size
- US Trade (6 x 9″): larger paperback size
- US Letter (8.5 x 11″): “printer paper” size, good for reports/whitepapers etc.
- Custom (8.5 x 9.25″): a larger format book
- Duodecimo (5 x 7.75″): a wee little book
- Pocket (4.25 x 7″): small pocketbook size
- A4 (21 x 29.7 cm): standard European “printer paper” format, good for reports/whitepapers etc.
- A5 (14.8 x 21 cm): half the size of the standard European printer paper format
- Custom: when selected, fields will appear where you can enter a custom width and heig