BookPress – For Book Authors

Description

Writing a book? Promoting a book? This is the plugin for you. Easily write and display your books on WordPress. Add covers, pages, table of contents, chapters, track progress with word counts and more.

It’s currently difficult to recreate the feel of a book on WordPress – you either need to make your whole site into the ‘book’ or figure out complex work-arounds like creating your own taxonomies. WordPress’s own support section says “There are ways to use a blog to post long-form pieces in chapters, however, though it will require a bit of work.” BookPress solves all this for you!

If your dream is to self-publish your novel, or to create a site where you can mix your blog, books and other features, BookPress is for you.

This plugin includes –

BookPress Features

• Write your book in WordPress and easily display it ‘like a book’
• Add book elements such as covers, table of contents, dedication, copyright page, chapters, etc.
• Drop and drag book elements to reorder your book content
• ‘Book like’ page numbering – use Roman numerals for front matter and Arabic for body and end matter
• Automatic creation of Table of Contents with live links to jump to relevant page
• Sidebar widget to display your book and link to it
• Progress tracking – word counts for each element (eg chapter) and the whole book to help keep you motivated!
• Assign genres to books
• Translation ready
• Clean, easy to read front end book design that ‘feels like a book’
• Front end display of book with sections, content, page numbering, etc. correctly formatted and sequenced

BookPress Premium

• Create and display multiple books on your WordPress site (free version limited to a single book)
• Index tags to create a book index with live links to jump to page
• Additional sidebar widget enabling display of multiple books
• Front End ‘Library’ page shortcode to display and sort all your books by genre, author name, Book ID, and more.
• Footnotes – ability to add notes to the end of a page with a reference (a super text numeral) linking to a note
• Enhanced Progress Tracking – set targets for writing (e.g. words per week) and track your progress with graphs and statistics

Translations (full or partial)

• Chinese (China) / 简体中文
• Chinese (Hong Kong) / 香港中文版
• German / Deutsch
• Polish / Polski
• Russian / Русский

Links

• Documentation
• Project Site
• Premium Version
• Premium Version Trial/Demo to Play With!
• Donate to support plugin development

Screenshots

Installation

Manual Install From WordPress Dashboard

If your server is not connected to the Internet, then you can use this method-

1. Download the plugin by clicking on the blue ‘Download’ button above. A ZIP file will be downloaded.
2. Login to your site’s admin panel and navigate to Plugins -> Add New -> Upload.
3. Click ‘Choose File’, select the plugin file and click install.

Install Using FTP

If you are unable to use any of the methods due to internet connectivity and file permission issues, then you can use this method-

1. Download the plugin by clicking on the blue ‘Download’ button above. A ZIP file will be downloaded.
2. Unzip the file.
3. Launch your favorite FTP client. Such as FileZilla, FireFTP, CyberDuck etc. If you are a more advanced user, then you can use SSH too.
4. Upload the folder to wp-content/plugins/
5. Log in to your WordPress dashboard.
6. Navigate to Plugins -> Installed
7. Activate the plugin.

FAQ

Does BookPress support WordPress multisite installation?

Yes.

Does BookPress work with the Gutenberg Editor?

No. Please ensure you use the Classic Editor.

Can I import/export?

You can paste text from Word. Export features (PDF, Mobi, ePub etc coming soon)

I get an error ‘Cannot redeclare…etc’ when adding the Premium version. How can I stop this?

Make sure the free version is disabled or removed to avoid this error message.

Do you have an affiliate program?

Yes! You can earn 20% on sales of our Premium version by linking to our website or WordPress page – check out the Affiliation link in the plugin sidebar after installing.

Reviews

Adds upgrade banner to every dashboard page

Flowerlark October 23, 2021

This plugin adds an obnoxious ’upgrade to pro’ banner on EVERY SINGLE PAGE of my dashboard with no option to dismiss it. Want to make a new post? UPGRADE BOOKPRESS. Checking my stats? UPGRADE BOOKPRESS. Moderating comments? UPGRADE BOOKPRESS. I get that you want to sell your premium version, but this is beyond irritating, and any plugin that irritates me is not one I’m keen to spend money on. I don’t even know if I like this plugin yet because I’m too annoyed to use it. Please get rid of that awful notice, or limit it to the Bookpress-specific pages of the dashboard. You’re only alienating potential customers.

Good but needs improvement

July 22, 2021

I wish I could add at least half a star! I bought the pro version of this plugin and immediately got a fatal error. I submitted a ticket, and a day later have not heard back. Good thing my partner figured out the problem, which was not listed in their documentation of how to install and activate. Just for others who might be reading this review, you do have to remove the non-pro-version of BookPress first, before activating the pro version. Otherwise, it won’t work. Now on to the plugin. This needs just a bit of overhaul before I would consider the plugin worth it. One is that formatting like block quotes and bullets really messes up text in the actual online book. Words completely drop out, for instance. Another issue is that words drop out of text. For example, I reference the magazine “Southern Living” in my novel. And the “Southern” part dropped out, even though it’s there when I input the sample chapter. I cannot find any reason why it dropped. The magazine is italicized, but all of it is, both “Southern” and “Living”–just a strange bug. Finally, I prefer justified text when reading and publishing. Right now that’s not an option in the plugin’s formatting box. And, of course, some options there, like bullets or block quotes, just don’t work at all without removing words randomly. These things seem so basic for this type of plugin–ensure that formatting works and that the words input are not dropping out! Some things that would make this plugin really worth it, to me, would be some things I think that the developer is polling on, like, there should be a way to make it so that you can put an entire book behind a paywall. It’s good to see that they are thinking of these things.

Excellent Layout Capability – Guiding Book Format Well

cheathampatrick June 20, 2021

BookPress has a very satisfying way of defining books, pages, TOC, index, numbering, into customizable sections full of flexibility. The main reason I value this is to guide and prepare me for book format as I port over independent standalone essays and articles that were not formerly organized into chapters. This keys me to write differently and apply consistency. My plan is to eventually also offer my final several books for hardback and epub purchase as self-publisher using a popular online service for copy, print, and on-demand distribution. Nearly surely, I will in the end export all BookPress work sections and pages to Microsoft Word, and do final formatting there, with very refined and customized detailed touch, to render .PDF Acrobat files for hardback and epub master. Improvements maybe? The page number buttons are bit slow to appear, upon reading the book in player. When dragging pages left or right, text is drag-selected also, and it would be neat if that didn’t happen with inverse coloring of selected text. This also better prevents plagiarized copy, possibly. I miss being able to read my book projects in larger screen full page width, per only one page. If BookPress could have a selectable “Output Frame Style” option feature in the Settings, it would be great to have full page version looking very much like a normal WordPress Page, but with larger text size, and page numbers for navigation. Also, that feature could offer a one-page full screen or large screen option of wider page and a bit taller, as a third way of viewing. All in all, BookPress is well designed and thoughtfully featured. I feel the plugin is still ripe for even greater shining at what it aims to do. A PDF or HTML complete list of [] short codes that covers *everything* in one long list, with ample examples, would be better than having to wait through many repeat how-to videos. Cheers book writers! Go Team BookPress!

Better Than Pressbooks

a565 August 28, 2020

For those who would like great control of their online books, this is the best plugin in development, with the potential to convert an online html book to epub or pdf in the coming days. Self-hosting your books is what it’s all about; cut-out the middleman – especially if they don’t offer a book backup solution (Pressbooks does not). BookPress offers readers a real, traditional, book reading experience – as if the book was open on their lap. Flip-books are fancy, but a simple slide-effect like BookPress offers is less distracting. It is apparent great care was taken to emulate printed books AND to assist writers in their efforts to construct well-structured ones (e.g., the cover, TOC, Dedication, Copyright pages, are auto-generated). Writer tools such as Goal Setting and Word Counts are there, and for a small upgrade, BookPress offers additional features such as Footnotes, Endnotes, Indexes. If you would like to display your book covers in a side-widget prominently, a simple Shortcode is all that is needed. This plugin is well designed, intuitive, and their support team very responsive. Now may be the perfect time to get in on their early pricing.

5 Star Idea— What a Great Solution for Indy Authors

Sri Shunyata February 15, 2019 1 reply

You’re so write : ) It is damn hard to write long-form well documented prose on Wordpress, let alone use WP to publish a book, and build a collaborative community. For years, I’ve been pondering if I should and how I would publish my books on my WP Websites. Now that I know that BookPress is available, and reasonably priced, I’m going to dig into your documentation and seriously reconsider my priorities. I do hope that BookPress is light weight, optimize for speed and easily customized. Any chance that you’ll team up with Grammarly or Scrivener? Good luck I look forward to BookPress becoming a brilliant success. Thanks

Contributors & Developers

Changelog

= 1.2.4- 31 October 2023=
* Freemius SDK verion 2.6.0

= 1.2.3- 24 Feburary 2022=
*Security Fix

1.2.2 – 15 September 2021

• Update Licencing SDK 2.4.2
• Bug fix

1.2.1 – 16 August 2021

• Bug fix

*Add Smart devices view functionality
*Add page design features

1.2.0 – 07 January 2021

• Update Licencing SDK 2.4.1
  *Add Smart devices view functionality
  *Add page design features

1.1.20 – 07 October 2020

• Fix Unwanted text on cover page

1.1.18 – 29 July 2020

• Update Licencing SDK 2.4.0
  Fix display issue on smartphone

1.1.17 – 11 June 2020

• Update Licencing SDK

1.1.16 – 29 April 2020

• Bug fix

1.1.15 – 26 April 2020

• Update Licencing SDK

1.1.14 – 1 April 2020

• Not issued to WP

1.1.13 – 23 August 2019

• Bug fix

1.1.12 – 30 July 2019

• Bug fix

1.1.11 – 27 May 2019

• Fix shortcode [library] option genre

1.1.10 – 21 May 2019

• Fix Rounding on target figures added
• Fix Text bumped under book by shortcode

1.1.9 – 16 May 2019

• Tweak progress tracking

1.1.8 – 22 April 2019

• Tweak progress tracking

1.1.7 – 1 March 2019

• Security fix
• Added full Russian and partial Polish translation files

1.1.6 – 26 January 2019

• bug fix

1.1.5 – 23 January 2019

• Small bug fix

1.1.4 – 05 January 2019

• Small bug fix

1.1.3 – 03 January 2019

• Fix licencing issues Premium vs Free
• Fix saving posts and pages not possible
• Tweak some typos

1.1.2 – 01 January 2019

• Replace Genres list

1.1.1 – 26 December 2018

• Fix small issue
• Added .pot file to assist with translations

1.1.0 – 26 December 2018

• Add support for affiliate program

1.0.0 – 23 December 2018

• First Release