Export your book as a PDF file

How to export your book and get it ready to print

Dan Kemp avatar
Written by Dan Kemp
Updated over a week ago

It is possible to export your book as a PDF file and print it. 

Of course, you lose all the lovely audio and video if you do this, but if you've got a simple text/image book then it can be fun to print it.

Here's how you do it:

  1. From your bookshelf, click on the Share button beneath your book.

  2. Choose Print

  3. A new tab will open displaying the PDF version of your book.

  4. From here, you'll see 3 icons in the toolbar. The first one rotates the page (although this has no effect on the PDF if you print or save it). The next icon allows you to download the PDF, and the last icon allows you to print the PDF.

  5. If you print the PDF, the Print Dialogue screen will open and you can change the settings before you print.

Here's the book above in PDF preview mode in Chrome:

Book Creator for iPad

When you export your book as a PDF from the iPad app, the best thing to do is send it to the Files app so you can store it or open it on another computer. You could also try using AirPrint to print the PDF directly to a printer.

A few things to note about printing

Book Creator is optimised for creating multimedia ebooks, with rich content such as audio and video. You'll lose this if you try to print your ebook.

Be aware that printing an ebook or creating a PDF is tricky to get right. You'll need a bit of trial and error to account for differences in your printer settings, paper sizes, and layouts. This isn't something we can really help with as there too many printer variables! 

Some people have pointed out that the PDF export includes white margins - this is something that the Chrome browser adds and is beyond our control.

If you want some inspiration - this is the kind of result you can achieve with a little patience:

The example above was printed in 2015, originally made in Book Creator for iPad.

Here's an example of a printed book, made using Book Creator online: 'Collaborating on a printed book for Book Week' (Nov 2018).

And here's another example, from April 2021: 'Is this the perfect Book Creator project?'

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