Generating eBooks and PDFs

GitBook can generates a website, but can also output content as ebook (ePub, Mobi, PDF).

# Generate a PDF file
$ gitbook pdf ./ ./mybook.pdf

# Generate an ePub file
$ gitbook epub ./ ./mybook.epub

# Generate a Mobi file
$ gitbook mobi ./ ./mybook.mobi

Installing ebook-convert

ebook-convert is required to generate ebooks (epub, mobi, pdf).

OS X

Download the Calibre application. After moving the calibre.app to your Applications folder create a symbolic link to the ebook-convert tool:

$ sudo ln -s ~/Applications/calibre.app/Contents/MacOS/ebook-convert /usr/local/bin

You can replace /usr/local/bin with any directory that is in your $PATH.

Cover

Covers are used for all the ebook formats. You can either provide one yourself, or generate one using the autocover plugin.

To provide a cover, place a cover.jpg file at the root directory of your book. Adding a cover_small.jpg will specify a smaller version of the cover. The cover should be a JPEG file.

A good cover should respect the following guidelines:

• Size of 1800x2360 pixels for cover.jpg, 200x262 for cover_small.jpg
• No border
• Clearly visible book title
• Any important text should be visible in the small version