Install

First install the bookdown R package as follows:

install.packages('devtools')
devtools::install_github('rstudio/bookdown')

It is important to install devtools first since bookdown’s installation requires its very latest version (v1.10).

Next, install the latest Preview Release of RStudio IDE (this release is required for the build and preview features described below).

Edit

The best way to get started is to fork or clone the the repository https://github.com/rstudio/bookdown-demo (if you are not familiar with Git and GitHub, you can alternatively download it as a zip file and unzip it).

Open the demo book as a project within RStudio, open the index.Rmd file, and click the Knit button:

Now you should see the index page of this book demo in the preview window:

The Knit button renders just the chapter you are currently editing (e.g. index.Rmd, 01-intro.Rmd, etc.) using the default output format for the book. To build all chapters and all formats of the book you can use the Build Book button within the RStudio Build pane:

By default the HTML, PDF, and ePub formats of the book will be compiled into the _book sub-directory of the project (you can also build a single format at a time using the Build Book menu).

For the comprehensive documentation of bookdown, please see https://bookdown.org/yihui/bookdown.

Publish

To publish your books to bookdown.org, you need to first create an account by signing in with your Google account, and then call the function publish_book() in R:

bookdown::publish_book(render = 'local')

If it is the first time you have tried to publish the book, you will be asked to authorize bookdown to publish to your bookdown.org account.