LibGuides: Publishing in Pressbooks: Introduction

What is Pressbooks?

Pressbooks is a WordPress-based online platform for self-publishing books in multiple formats: e-books, webbooks, and print-ready PDFs. The software, which is open source, makes significant changes to the WordPress admin interface, web presentation, and export routines. Although popular with monographs, edited collections, open textbooks, its built-in interactive H5P plug-in also makes it a good choice for Open Educational Resources.

The University of Illinois Library currently provides support for Pressbooks through the Illinois Open Publishing Network (IOPN) for more formal projects, involving an author agreement with the library and working on a publication timeline. Request a publishing consultation to begin the process.

Please, Ask Us for Help!

If you are an affiliate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and are having trouble using Pressbooks or other digital publishing resources, you can contact the University of Illinois Library Scholarly Communication and Publishing unit for help.

For more information, visit the Scholarly Communication and Publishing website or email us at scpub@library.illinois.edu .

Subject Guide

Scholarly Communications and Publishing

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Pressbooks from IOPN

Claude Monet: The Water-Lilies and other writings on art

Reasons to use Pressbooks

Low-medium learning curve
Downloadable in multiple formats
Ideal for monographs, manuscripts, blog-to-book, and open textbooks
Similar to WordPress

The Pressbooks Guide to Self-Publishing

What Version Should I Use?

Public Install of Pressbooks
The public installation of Pressbooks is free to use for private books. Use this if your are uncertain whether Pressbooks is right for your project, if your project is small, or if you lack the resources to maintain your own instance of Pressbooks. A public E-Book requires a one-time fee of $20 for 25MB.
Pressbooks through Scholarly Communication and Publishing
Faculty members working on open access journals or educational resources can seek a consultation with the Office of Scholarly Communication and Publishing to request access to the Library's Pressbooks account.
Open Source
For institutions, academic presses, small publishers, and individual authors with a larger volume of publications, it may make sense to host and maintain your own instance of Pressbooks.

Licensing

Except where otherwise indicated, original content in this guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license. You are free to share, adopt, or adapt the materials. We encourage broad adoption of these materials for teaching and other professional development purposes, and invite you to customize them for your own needs.