No matter what state your book idea exists in now, whether it’s entirely in your head, already exists in manuscript form in another software format, or has already been published as an ebook or print text, there’s a way to get it into Pressbooks to write, complete, or revise it. This chapter provides an overview of several ways you can bringing your book content into Pressbooks.

Write Your Book Directly in Pressbooks

Writing your book directly in Pressbooks is one of the easiest ways to ensure your book is well-formatted. Plus, it gives you the added benefit of using the platform itself as a tool to organize your book. To learn more about writing your book in Pressbooks, see the chapters in the ‘Add and Organize Book Content’ section of this guide.

Copy and Paste from Another Source

Copying and pasting content from another application (like your word processor) is a reliable but sometimes labor-intensive way to bring content into Pressbooks. If you’d like to copy and paste your text into Pressbooks, we recommend:

1. Create empty Parts and Chapters in Pressbooks which reflect the desired structure of your finished manuscript.
2. From the book dashboard, click Organize and select the first Chapter you would like to paste content into.
3. Open your source document and highlight and copy your desired text selection.
4. Return to the browser tab with the open Pressbooks chapter and place your cursor in the body of the chapter.
5. Use your computer’s paste command to paste text into the chapter body.
6. Click Save.

Repeat as needed until all of your content has been pasted in the relevant sections of your book.

If you use this copy and paste method, you will likely still want to review the pasted text to make sure that it does not include unwanted elements. The text editor can help you spot span tags and other unwanted artifacts that may have been present in your source document.

Note: Pressbooks will attempt to automatically clean up text that has been pasted from Microsoft Word by retaining formatting that will be displayed correctly (things like headings, paragraphs, line breaks, bolding, italics and lists) while removing styling-specific span tags and other unnecessary cruft. You can choose to bypass this feature and paste your selection as plain text by activating ‘Paste as Text’ in the Visual Editor.

Use the Import Tool

The import tool allows you to bring content into Pressbooks from a variety of different file formats, including:

• EPUB (.epub)
• Pressbooks/WordPress XML (.xml or .wxr)
• Web page (.html or URL)
• OpenOffice documents (.odt)
• Google Doc (available on Pressbooks Enterprise networks and Pressbooks Self-Publisher)
• Word document (.docx)

For more on importing a Google Doc, see our instructions below or see our video tutorial. If you have a Microsoft Word .docx file you’re intending to import, we recommend opening it in Google Docs and then importing it into Pressbooks from there, since this currently preserves more formatting than a direct Word document import.

The maximum file size for imports from files is 50M.

To import a file into your book:

1. Click Import from the left sidebar menu.
2. Click Import Type and select the type of file you’re importing.
   
3. Click Upload File or Import from URL in the “Import Source” option.
4. If you’ve chosen Upload File: Click Choose File and select the file on your computer you want to import.
   If you’ve chosen Import from URL: enter a valid URL.
5. Click Begin Import.

Once your import files has been uploaded and processed by Pressbooks, you’ll see an overview of the available content Pressbooks can import from your file. Select each chunk of content you’d like to import by checking the box in the left column of the table. Select all content at once by clicking the checkbox in the top row of the table.

You can choose whether each content chunk is imported as front matter, as a chapter, a part, back matter, or as a glossary term.

⚠️ If you’ve selected chapters for import but you encounter a message saying that no chapters were selected, click the Import button again.

Import a Google Doc

📌 Requirements: Pressbooks Enterprise network or Pressbooks Self-Publisher (pressbooks.pub). Google Doc imports are not available on Pressbooks Public networks.

Connect Your Google Account

If you select Google Doc as the Import Type, you’ll be prompted to connect your Google account. Doing so allows you to import existing Google Docs that you’ve created into your book. As detailed in our privacy policy (‘Other Third-Party Connections – Google Docs’), Pressbooks does not use your connected Google Account for any other purpose.

When you’re prompted to “Select what Pressbooks can access > See, edit, create, and delete only the specific Google Drive files you use with this app,” ensure the checkbox beside this text is checked before proceeding.

If you proceed without checking this checkbox, you’ll encounter an error when subsequently attempting to import a doc. If this happens, you’ll need to disconnect your Google Account from the Import page – which can be done by selecting Google Docs as the Import Type and clicking the Disconnect Google Account button that appears there – before reconnecting your Google Account with this checkbox checked.

Import Your File

Once you’ve connected your Google Account, with Google Docs still selected as the Import Type, click Select from Google Drive. This pulls up a searchable list of Google Docs that you have access to in your Google Drive, with the most recently modified documents appearing first. Select the file you intend to import and click Select. Then click Begin Import, following the same Import process outlined above. But before you reach this stage, you may want to prepare your Google Doc first:

Prepare Your Google Doc for Import

There are a few things you can do in your Google Doc to improve the quality of the import to Pressbooks.

1. Select all text in your Google Doc and apply the ‘Normal’ style.
2. Apply the ‘Heading 1’ style to each of your desired chapter titles. This will help Pressbooks recognize this content as the start of a new chapter upon import.
3. Ensure that images in your Google Doc have alt text present by selecting the image, clicking ‘Image Options’ and checking the alt text field.

What formatting is preserved from a Google Doc?

We aim to automatically preserve headings, text formatting, bulleted lists, numbered lists, images (including alt text), and footnotes from Google Docs imported into Pressbooks.

Tables are also preserved, with two caveats. After importing tables from a Google Doc, you’ll still need to navigate to the chapter editor and define header cells in order to make your imported tables accessible. You’ll likely also need to edit the appearance of imported tables (whether they use lines, a full grid, shading, etc.) from the chapter editor.

We support importing glossary terms from a Google Doc into Pressbooks; more on that below.

⚠️ Use of the ‘document tabs’ feature from Google Docs is not currently supported by our importer (only the first ‘tab’ is imported).

Import Glossary Terms from a Google Doc

It’s possible to import glossary terms from your Google Doc using these steps:

1. Within the text of your Google Doc, add [GT] at the beginning and [/GT] at the end of each glossary term. For example: [GT]term[/GT]
2. At the end of your Google Doc, add a Glossary section with the title Glossary on its own line styled as a Heading 3.
3. Right below that, in Normal text, list each glossary term on its own line in the format term: definition.

This ensures that all included glossary terms and their associated definitions will be added to your book’s bank of glossary terms upon import. For an example of the necessary formatting, see this sample Google Doc, which contains two glossary terms with definitions.

Glossary terms can consist of multiple words separated by spaces. Glossary term definitions can be multiple sentences each.

The import process does not create a Glossary List back matter in your book, but such a Glossary List can be added to your book by following these separate instructions.

Sample Google Doc

If you’d like to reference a very short, prepared file with the formatting discussed above, please see this sample Google Doc.

Video: Google Docs Importer Tutorial