Disclaimer: This is an unofficial, community-maintained fork of Writebook originally created by 37signals. This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by 37signals in any way. For the official version, visit once.com/writebook. The original copyright belongs to 37signals LLC and is preserved in LICENSE.md.
Instantly publish your own books on the web for free, no publisher required.
Blogging and posting on social is easy. But why is it so hard to publish a whole book on the web? It's not anymore. Writebook is remarkably simple software that allows you to publish text and pictures in a simple, browsable online book format.
- Make a book, give it a title, upload a cover.
- Add text, images, and sections to your book.
- Drag pages to reorganize as you flesh things out.
- Invite as many co-authors as you'd like. Let some just read, let others write too.
- When done, just flip the switch and instantly publish your book live on the web for everyone.
- All your Writebooks show up together in your library. Make as many as you'd like.
Whatever you've written is ready for Writebook. No publisher, no gatekeeper, no permission necessary. Just write it.
- Instruction manuals. Publish a manual to go along with a piece of software, hardware, or a process that needs simple, clear documentation.
- Graphic novels. Writebooks offer a picture-page type so you can have a book made entirely of pictures. Perfect for graphic novels, or even just photobooks with captions.
- Employee handbooks. Document your internal processes, policies, norms, and rules just for your employees (privately) or for everyone to see (publicly).
- A collection of short stories. Pull together a handful of separate short stories into a self-contained anthology.
- A group of blog posts. Been blogging for years? Make a collection of your top posts as a cohesive whole.
- Internal technical runbooks. Have procedures you need documented and followed? Make your runbook a private Writebook.
- Family stories. Gather up history, stories, and photos from your extended family into a book you can proudly share.
Since Writebook is software you install and host yourself, you'll need a few things before you begin:
- Your own domain name. You'll need to point the DNS to the IP address of the machine hosting Writebook.
- A web server connected to the internet. This could be your own hardware or something hosted in the cloud like AWS, DigitalOcean, etc. All you need is 2GB RAM / 1 CPU.
Install and setup should take about 10 minutes.
Is it really free? No catch? Yes, Writebook is free for real. It's our way to give back and encourage people to publish independently on the web. You'll have to host the software on your own server, but Writebook itself is entirely free.
What do you mean I have to host Writebook? Writebook isn't an app or service someone else runs. It's a fully independent system that you run and host yourself. That means you install it on a server you own (or rent) and control.
Can we write private books too? All books in Writebook start as private just to the users you've invited to your account. Once you flip the switch on a book to publish it, anyone in the world can read it. You can have a mix of public and private books on the same installation.
Can I write multiple books with a single copy of Writebook? Yes, you can write as many books as you'd like. They'll all be hosted in the same place on the same domain. If you want to host books on different domains, you'll need separate installs.
Can we modify Writebook for our own purposes? Yes, you can make whatever changes to the Rails code that you'd like, but once you change the code you're on your own. Any updates might overwrite your changes.
Can we import existing books into Writebook? Writebooks are formatted using Markdown. You can copy/paste any Markdown to/from your pages, but there's no formal import/export feature.
Can I export Kindle, PDF, ePUB, or other formats? Not currently. Writebook purely publishes web-based books.
See LICENSE.md.
See CONTRIBUTING.md.