Pressbooks

Not to be confused with pressbook.

Pressbooks is an open source content management system designed for creating books. It is based on WordPress, and can export content in many formats for ebooks, webbooks or print.^[1]

Pressbooks
Logo as of August 2022
Developer(s)	Book Oven, Inc.
Initial release	2011
Stable release	5.20.1 / 27 April 2021; 4 years ago (2021-04-27)
Repository	https://github.com/pressbooks
Written in	PHP
Platform	WordPress
Type	content management system
License	GNU GPLv3
Website	pressbooks.org

History

Pressbooks is developed by Book Oven, Inc., a Montreal-based company founded in 2011 by Hugh McGuire (who also founded the audio book platform LibriVox).^[1][2][3] Originally aimed at self-publishing authors, in 2017 Pressbooks shifted its focus to work with universities on academic and textbook publishing.^[3]

Overview

The software is built on WordPress Multisite with modification of the admin and reader interfaces to reflect the intention of authoring books, a choice of themes for formating books, and to allow the export of books in print-ready PDF, mobi, ePub, and many other open formats.^[4][5] It is available as a hosted service for self-publishers (pressbooks.com), supported institutional hosting (PressbooksEdu), third party hosts, or self-hosting of the software available from pressbooks.org.

Pressbooks is often used to create open textbooks and other forms of open educational resource, for example at the following institutions:

• University of Hawaii^[6]
• University of California, Berkeley^[7]
• University of Kansas^[8]
• eCampusOntario^[9]
• Unizin Consortium^[10]
• Indiana University^[11]
• Illinois University^[12]
• BCcampus^[13]
• Michigan State University^[14]
• University of Sheffield^[15]