Getting started

This guide installs md2book and builds a small book in every edition.

Requirements

• Node.js 26 or newer.
• Chromium, which md2book uses for the PDF, cover and the web edition's generated images. Playwright installs it once per machine (about 150 MB).
• Optional: epubcheck on your PATH, so the QA report includes its result.

Install

$ npm install -g @thixpin/md2book
$ npx playwright install chromium
$ md2book --help

On Linux, run npx playwright install --with-deps chromium to install the system libraries as well. To try md2book without installing it, prefix any command with npx @thixpin/md2book instead of md2book.

1. Create the book

$ md2book init my-book --lang en --title "My Book" --author "Me"
created my-book/book.json
created my-book/chapters/chapter-01.md
$ cd my-book

In a terminal, init asks for anything you leave out. Use --lang my for a Myanmar book and --font serif for serif type. init never overwrites files.

Every other command reads book.json from the current folder, so the rest of this guide runs inside my-book/.

2. Add a cover

The builds need the cover image named by cover in book.json (cover/cover.png by default). Use an existing PNG or JPEG, or design one in HTML and render it with the book's fonts (see Covers):

$ md2book cover cover/cover.html

3. Fetch the fonts

$ md2book fonts

This downloads the book's font set once and verifies every file. After that, everything works offline. See Fonts.

4. Write

Chapters live in chapters/, one file per chapter, and each starts with its chapter heading:

# Chapter 1 - Getting Started

Write your first chapter here.

Add chapters/chapter-02.md and so on; files are read in name order. See Writing chapters for parts and code includes, and Markdown syntax for everything a chapter can contain.

5. Build

$ md2book build all

This writes the PDF, the EPUB and the QA report to dist/book/. To also build the web edition, list the public chapters in book.json:

"web_published_chapters": ["chapter-01.md"]

Then preview it:

$ md2book serve
Serving http://127.0.0.1:8000/ (Ctrl+C to stop)

Project layout

Path	What it is
book.json	the book's configuration
chapters/chapter-01.md	chapters, matched by chapter_glob
cover/cover.png	the cover image
dist/book/	everything md2book builds (Editions)

Next steps

• Read QA-REPORT.md in dist/book/ before publishing.
• Build the print-shop interior with md2book build pdf --printed.
• Browse the usage examples and the demo book.