Create an eBook
To create an eBook, just go to the navigation item "ebooks" in the settings, or to the tab called "ebooks" in the pages and fill out all steps.
#Select Layouts and Settings
In the first tab called "general" you can select a layout for your ebook. Typemill provides some example layouts, but you can also develop your own layout. Please note that all following forms and settings depend on the selected layout. Some layouts provide all kind of forms, other layouts do not provide any forms and settings at all.
We will explain all possible forms in the next sections.
#Headlines and Images
In the general settings, you can choose the headline levels and the quality of images.
Per default, the headline levels will be re-written depending on the position of the page within the website. That means, that a headline of level h1 will be rewritten to a headline of level h2, if the page is in the navigation level 2. For example: You have a root folder with the name "First Chapter" and a subpage within that root folder with the name "First story". In this case, the title (h1) of the page "First Story" will be rewritten to a headline h2. You can disable this behavior, so that the headline levels keep as they are. But this means, that the structure and hierarchy of your website is not reflected in the eBook anymore. Just make some experiments to understand how it works.
Typemill uses the resized images for the eBook by default. This means that you get a smaller file size that is optimized for screens. If you want to use the original images with a better quality, just activate the second checkbox.
#Hyphens
As of version 88, the chrome browser supports hyphens for all platforms out of the box. The third party library "hyphenator" has been erased in the plugin with version 1.2.1 and it should work now without any additional settings. If it does not work, you can check the code of version 1.2.0 on GitHub.
#Endnotes
You can transform your footnotes into endnotes if you want. The endnotes will be added to a separate page at the end of your eBook. General footnote support will be added to the pages.js library in 2021.
#Additional Settings
This is probably one of the most exciting features of the eBook-plugin: A developer can add all kind of individual forms into the section "additional settings" and use the input in the eBook. This is super flexible, but like with all forms it depends on the layout if it uses them or not.
#Configure the Front Pages
Again: It depends on the layout if you can configure the front pages or not. In the following sections we will explain all possible configurations that your layout might provide.
#Cover and Titelpage
With the cover and titlepage section, you can add a title, a subtitle, an author line and an edition line to your cover. The individual layouts will support or use this information individually, but often the content can also be used to create a classic titlepage following the book cover.
#Cover Image
If supported by the layout, you can also upload an individual cover image. Sometimes this cover-image will only be used for some parts of the cover and sometimes it will be used in full size. You can also click a checkbox that will hide all the manually edited title and subtitle from the section above. Instead you can simply design your cover-image with all information that you want. Again: All those features are not neccessarily supported by each layout. Just try it out.
#Imprint and Dedication
The layout might support an individual imprint and/or a dedication page. Both are simple textareas.
#Table of Contents
Typemill supports an automatically generated table of contents with page numbers. The design of the table of contents will depend on the eBook layout again. You can add a headline for the table of contents and select, how many levels should be listed there. It is also possible to add automatic numbers before each entry. Remember that the table of contents will reflect the headline-levels and that the headline levels are overwritten depending on the hierarchy of each page. You can disable this behavior in the general settings as described.
#Select Content
In the tab called "content" you can select or unselect pages from the eBook. The structure is equal to the navigation of your website. By default, all pages will be selected. If you unselect a folder, then each file within that folder will be unselected, too. This behavior follows the philosophy, that a Typemill website is equal to a Typemill eBook. So if you want another content structure for your eBook, then you have to change the structure of the website.
Another important hint: Typemill will store your selection, so that you can use it again later. but if you changed the content or structure of your website, then the selected content will no longer exist and the eBook generation will not work anymore. In this case, use the button "Load Latest Content Tree" to refresh the content structure for your eBook.
#Back of Your eBook
Right now, Typemill only provides a simple textfield, where you can add content for a "blurb" for your eBook. We will probably add some more standard fields in future.
#Generate the eBook
On the last tab "create" you can generate the preview of the eBook. You will find some more instructions of the page, but if you already configured everything according to this documentation, then you can simply click the button and save the eBook preview as a PDF.
