EBREW

EBREW lets you create EPUB books and documents using Markdown and a simple JSON manifest format. To get started, install ebrew via npm and start a new book:

> npm i -g ebrew

> cd ~/projects
> mkdir lorem-ipsum && cd $_
> ebrew init
...

Follow the prompts to set up a book.json manifest, which stores information about your book. Then, get writing!

> cat >book.md
# Lorem

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod
tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim
veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea
commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate
velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat
cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id
est laborum.

## Ipsum

Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut
aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in
voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur
sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt
mollit anim id est laborum.
^D

When you're done (or you just want to see how things are looking), use ebrew to generate your book:

> ebrew
Generated Lorem-Ipsum.epub

You can specify the output filename and the path to your manifest, but EBREW picks sensible defaults so you usually won't have to.

Sections

As your book gets larger, it's nice to be able to split it up into manageable chunks. The contents manifest key lets you put each section in its own .md file and join them together in the final product. For example:

{
  "title": "Lorem Ipsum",
  "contents": [
    "lorem.md",
    "ipsum.md"
  ]
}

Each section starts on a new page.

Images

You can add images to your markdown documents as you normally would.

![Three circles](images/circles.svg)

EBREW automatically copies the images you use into the resultant EPUB document and adjusts image URLs to correctly refer to them.

Reference

The above tutorial should give you a pretty good idea of how to use EBREW; the following sections provide a comprehensive reference of the command line interface, the manifest format, and EBREW's Markdown extensions.

The ebrew command

> ebrew help

ebrew init

Takes no options. Runs an interactive wizard for creating a new book.json manifest.

ebrew [make] [options] [output=title.epub]

Generates an EPUB file from the given manifest.

--input, -i — Path to the book manifest. Pass - for standard input. Default ./book.json.

The manifest format

key	description
uuid	A universally unique identifier for the book. Required.
isbn	An ISBN for the book. Optional.
doi	A DOI for the book. Optional.
contents	A path or list of paths corresponding to sections in the book. Required.
cover	The path to the cover image for the book. Optional.
coverPage	Specify false to omit the generated cover page from the spine of the book. The cover image will still be present as metadata, but will not appear in the book content. Default: true.
css	A path or list of paths to stylesheets for the book. Default [].
title	The book's title. Default: "Untitled".
sortTitle	The book's title. Default: generated from title.
subtitle	The book's subtitle, usually displayed below or beside the title, separated from it by a colon. Default: "", i.e., no subtitle.
language	An RFC 3066 language identifier indicating the primary language of the book's content. Default: "en".
author/authors	A string or list of strings indicating the authors of the book. Default: "" or [], i.e., no authors.
publisher	The book's publisher. Default: "", i.e., no publisher.
rights	A statement about rights. Default: "Copyright ©year authors".
date	The date of publication of the book. Default: today.
created	The date on which the book was created. Default: same as date.
copyrighted	The copyright date of the book. Default: same as date.
toc	Specify false to omit the generated table of contents from the spine of the book. The table of contents will still be present as metadata, but will not appear in the book content. Default: true.
tocDepth	The maximum nesting level of the generated table of contents. Default: 6, i.e., no limit.