book-press

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.

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.

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!

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.

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