21 Book Structure: Parts and Chapters
To structure your book in Pressbooks, go to Text > Organize. If you are starting a book from scratch you will see an empty book structure that looks something like this:
Pressbooks has four different types of content that you can use to structure your book.
- Front Matter: Includes pages such as Acknowledgements, Dedication or Foreword
- Back Matter: Includes content such as Appendix, Afterword, or Credits
- Parts: Organizational blocks that hold Chapters
- Chapters: The building blocks of your book
Parts and Chapters
Pressbooks is limited in how deeply you can nest your content. There are basically two levels: Parts and Chapters. You can use Parts and Chapters to break up your content into manageable and meaningful chunks. In fact, for some books you may find that your chapters are very long and may instead want to think of a Pressbooks “Part” as your chapter, and Pressbooks “Chapters” as topics within that chapter.
Important Note
Do not add any content to a Part (text or images) as this will disrupt some of the functionality of your textbook.
Reordering Chapters
Reordering chapters within a part can be done by dragging and dropping Chapters. Moving a Chapter to a part can be done either through drag and drop in the Organize > Text area, or can be done on each individual post. The Part must be created first. Then, in the Part interface, on the top right you will see a Part drop-down menu. Pick the part you want the chapter to be in.
