Problems

Over about ten years as a student in statistics, I have had these beliefs:

• books should have been much easier to write (technically)
• cheaper to buy (on the order of $10)
• richer to read (dynamic content – imagine you can fit a linear regression right inside the book)
• quicker to iterate (not waiting for eight years for a second edition)
• and authored by a small number of people but have attracted a large number of contributors (on the order of 100) instead of only relying on the feedback of three anonymous reviewers

Why are you giving up?

When you open a LaTeX editor to write a book, or see a book of $300, or think about writing the 2nd edition of your book…

We need to put an end to that

Changing just a tiny little bit in my LaTeX tabular

via Research in Progress

Word?

• Write a paragraph? Good. Another paragraph? Okay. Eventually…
• 

Markdown

• Easy! Ready? Go!
• 

R Markdown

• Much more force (Pandoc + R)
• 

bookdown

• Make you look awesome with a simple tool (https://bookdown.org)
• 

Demo

• One set of Rmd files, multiple types of output (PDF/HTML/EPUB)
• Extended Pandoc’s Markdown to support figure/table numbers and cross-references
• Can embed interactive content like HTML widgets/Shiny apps (if output is not HTML, take screenshots automatically)
• Gitbook style
  • Borrowed from gitbook.com but replaced the Markdown renderer
  • Responsive
  • Themes
  • The Edit button
  • Search, download, share buttons
• RStudio integration (preview version)
  • One-click to preview, build, or publish the book

Your turn

• I’m going to pass the ball to you, and looking forward to your books!
• 

When you try it by yourself

• You might run into certain issues that you don’t understand
• 
• Don’t panic; you may file issues to Github https://github.com/rstudio/bookdown or ask questions on StackOverflow with the tag bookdown

Thank you

• The only thing to remember: https://bookdown.org
• Yihui Xie
  • https://yihui.org
  • Twitter @xieyihui Github @yihui
• RStudio
  • https://www.rstudio.com
  • Twitter @rstudio Github @rstudio