Exporting the Book

1. Choose File › Export Book… (⇧⌘E).
2. Pick a format: beside it you see the title page and the opening of the first chapter as they will look.
3. Decide how to number the chapters, whether to add a title page with title, subtitle and author, and which statuses to leave out, the Ideas for instance.
4. Preview shows the whole book before exporting it; Export… saves it wherever you like.

The formats

Word (DOCX)

For publishers and anyone who edits in Word, in the format readers expect in the book’s language: Times 12 at one and a half spacing in Italian, double-spaced in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, Courier New on the lines of the Normseite in German. Real footnotes, each chapter on a new page. Comments become Word comments, if you ask.

Manuscript PDF

The typescript to send out, as readers want it in the book’s language: thirty lines of sixty characters in Italian and German, twenty-five in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese; in English also “Surname / TITLE / page” at the top and the word count on the first page. On A4 paper, or Letter if your Mac prints on Letter.

Book PDF

Laid out like a printed book: A5, Literata, justified and hyphenated, parts on right-hand pages, the contents at the end.

ePub

For Apple Books and other e-readers, with a table of contents and footnotes at the end of each chapter.

HTML

A single page with the images inside, to read in a browser or print.

Markdown

A single file; if the book has images, a folder with the file and a media folder.

For the Book PDF, under Page choose the typeface, the size (A5, 15 × 21 cm or 6 × 9 inches), the margins and what goes at the top of the pages. For the ePub, under Cover one of the project’s images and under Description a few lines about the book, which bookstores show. They are the project’s choices, like the numbering of chapters.

What goes in

The documents in the book folder, in sidebar order. Notes, comments and suggestions not yet accepted stay out. If there is something to check, like a document that can’t be found, the panel says so before exporting.

The folders at the top of the book are parts or chapters, and you decide once for the whole book, in the sheet, with The Book’s Folders Are. With Parts each folder is a part and its documents are chapters, each on a new page; with Chapters each folder is a chapter and its documents are its scenes. Until you choose, a folder is a part only if it holds other folders.

Document names can become titles too, once for the whole book: in the sheet, turn on Document names become titles. Each document then begins with its name, a level under its folder’s title, and the headings written in its text move down beneath it: the tree in the sidebar becomes the outline of the book. If a text already begins with its name, the title isn’t repeated; a document on a page of its own stays untitled. The first document of a folder with the same title, such as “Introduction” inside “Introduction”, doesn’t repeat it, even without this choice: the title appears once, the folder’s.

A dedication, an epigraph or a colophon wants a page alone: in the document’s inspector, under Book, turn on On a page of its own, untitled. The document’s title isn’t printed, the page has no number or running head and stays out of the contents; what follows starts on a new page. Below it, Alignment sets its lines to the left, in the middle or to the right: a dedication usually sits in the middle, an epigraph to the right. The text begins a third of the way down the page; for a colophon, turn on At the foot of the page and it ends at the bottom. In the Manuscript PDF, which is meant to be sent out, it is numbered like the others.

For one part alone, like a chapter for a beta reader, choose it in the sidebar and choose Export… from the right-click menu: in What the sheet offers The Whole Book or the part you chose. Chapters and parts keep the numbers they have in the book.

Printing

File › Print… (⌘P) opens the same sheet with the two layouts, Manuscript PDF and Book PDF, and starts from the open document: The Whole Book is one click away. Print… hands the pages to the Mac’s print panel. A note prints on its own, like a file open on its own: the same sheet, without what only a book has. Print… and Export… are also in the right-click menu of a document in the sidebar.

Other exports

File › Export Metadata… writes each document’s status, tags, synopsis and notes to a folder with two files, one to read and one for other programs. File › Full Export… puts the whole project in a zip archive.