Jekyll Book Boilerplate

A boilerplate for self-publishing books, based on the Jekyll blog platform.

Features:

• Table of contents
• Buttons for previous and next chapter
• Also, scripts for spellchecking the book and for converting it in various formats.

See sample

How to use

If you already know how to use Jekyll, copy the boilerplate, put the chapters in the _chapters folder, and edit the _config.yml, check below for detailed steps.

Creating your book's website (in Github)

1. Create a Github account

2. Create a new repository from the boilerplate by following the link https://github.com/boris-marinov/jekyll-book-boilerplate/generate

3. Fill out the "Repository Name" field and click "Create" - you repository should be up on "https://github.com/<your_username>/<your_book_title>".

4. Enable Github pages

   1. Go to the profile of your repository "https://github.com/<your_username>/<your_book_title>", and click "Settings".
   2. Scroll down to the "Github pages" and under the "Source" dropdown, select "main" - you book should be up on "https://<your_username>.github.io/<your_book_title>".

Editing the chapters

1. Go to the /_config.yml file and edit the name and description fields for your book. If you are using the Github guide from above you also need to set the baseurl property to <your_book_title>.
2. In the /_chapters folder, place the chapters of yout book where the file names would have to follow the chapters order, like 01, 02, 03 etc.

Read about Jekyll for more info.

Converting the book to epub

1. Install Pandoc.
2. Edit the /title.txt file
3. Start the convert script. Under MacOS, it would work if you install GNU sed, instead of the sed that comes with the OS.

There are links for downloading the epub and the txt files at the website footer

Spellchecking

1. Install npm and the spellchecker-cli npm package.
2. Start the spellcheck script.

You can fill any words that you want to exclude from the spellcheck in the /dictionary.txt file.