Yesterday I discovered an interesting new self-publishing platform called PressBooks. What caught my attention was that this is built upon the popular WordPress blogging platform. As authors generally already run their own WP Blog, this should make it a very familiar and easy to use system for most people.
Although it is possible to import a previously made ebook (EPUB) the core premise of the platform is that you write your book on PressBooks.com itself. You get all the same styling and formatting tools found in WordPress, along with the WP auto-save and versioning support, and as all web browsers come with a built dictionary, you also get your spellcheck for free.
Each book section (chapter/part/introduction/etc.) is written as a separate post, which may make editing somewhat difficult, but after a few minutes of playing it does all seem very straightforward.
Once you’ve finished writing your book you can export to the three main ebook formats; Kindle, EPUB and PDF – there are also options to connect to the BookBay distribution service, link to the books’ pages on Amazon/Kobo/BN, or create a Buy Page directly on PressBooks itself.
One interesting feature with this system is that it’s an Open Source WordPress plugin, so you can create your own publishing platform if you don’t wish to do everything via PressBooks. You can read more about that over at CodePoet.
I’ll certainly be keeping on eye on this over the coming months. Sign up for an account here; PressBooks.com