Novel Builder

Create novels using markdown.

Prerequisites

• Pandoc
• Weasyprint
• Poppler
• BASH >= 4.0

Getting Started

Note: All ./nb commands must be called from inside the novel-builder directory

1. Create a new repository.
2. Make a new directory src/ and populate it with chapters. Chapters in the resulting documents will be ordered alphabetically, so make sure you name your files accordingly. E.g. Chapter_01.md, Chapter_02.md, etc.
3. Add this repository as a git submodule: git submodule add https://github.com/jechasteen/novel-builder
4. Descend into novel-builder directory
5. Call ./nb init to customize your project. This runs a wizard that automatically fills in the templates with your project's info.
6. CSS and HTML files will be added to your src/ directory. Customize these files to suit your needs.
7. Use the nb script to build and maintain your project
   1. ./nb manuscript builds a submission-ready manuscript
   2. ./nb paperback builds a paperback-formatted pdf (according to src/css/paperback.css). See the @page documentation for more info.
   3. ./nb clean removes the build/ directory.
   4. ./nb wc prints word count for each chapter, a grand total count, and the estimated reading time (based on 250 words/minute).

Customization

Calling ./nb init runs a wizard which will customize files like title pages automatically. If you need to make changes, you can either edit the files individually, or go into your src/ and remove the non-markdown files (rm -r css/ html/) and call ./nb init again.

If you need to make styling changes, make the changes to the files that nb created in your src/ directory.

Keeping Up-to-date

To pull the latest git master of this module, call git submodule update --remote --merge.