press

Write your book in Markdown. Run one command. Get a finished book — a print-ready PDF, an ebook, and a reading website — all checked and verified before they ship. press does the typesetting, the proofreading of its own output, and the publishing, so you can spend your time writing.

New here? The quickstart walks you from a blank machine to your first built book, one copyable command at a time.

What you write, what you get

You write chapters as plain Markdown files — no layout to fuss over, no software to learn. Then one command, press all, produces:

• a print-ready PDF and an EPUB ebook,
• a reading website with a page for each chapter,
• plain-text, Word, and Markdown editions,
• and, when you are ready to sell, a print pack (interior, cover, and barcode) plus a link readers can order a physical copy from.

Every edition is checked and verified against your source before it ships, so what a reader gets is exactly the book you wrote.

Made with press

Real books, built with this pipeline — each is its own reading website press produced:

• Mostly Done. — A Brief Treatise on the Several Conditions under which Software may be Declared Finished. press was extracted from its production, so the tool inherits the scars of making it.
• Make Ready — A Printer’s Manual for the Age of Mechanical Compositors, by Clint Ecker. The pipeline end to end: a commissioned clothbound cover and fourteen engraved plates, each drawn by press illustrate and finished by press art enhance; the reader dressed in the book’s own Giants-orange cloth; a subject index, registered ISBNs, and a table of authorities — every surface press offers, exercised in one book.

Start a book

pip install "press @ git+https://github.com/clintecker/press@v2" && \
  press new my-book && \
  cd my-book && \
  press all

This installs press, scaffolds a complete book that already builds, and produces every edition — so you can see the whole pipeline before you write your first real word. The quickstart explains each step and what to do when something needs your attention.

Make it yours

The look is yours to shape. Colors, fonts, and the whole design register live in one small config file — or draft them from a one-line brief with press aesthetic "1970s pulp paperback". The words are always yours: press never invents your content, and your title and author appear verbatim on the cover.

Where to go next

• Quickstart — from nothing to a verified book.
• Install — the toolchain, per platform.
• Configuration — every setting a book can carry.
• Print ordering — let readers buy a copy.
• Command reference — every press command.
• Architecture — how the machine fits together, if you like to know what is under the hood.

MIT licensed, code and bundled content alike. A book you make with press is yours entirely.