Book Exporter

Write a book inside an Obsidian vault — one manifest note lists the table of contents, each chapter and section is its own note. The plugin compiles the structure into a single manuscript and exports to EPUB and PDF via Pandoc.

Desktop only. Requires pandoc on $PATH — or set the path in settings. For PDF, Typst is the recommended engine: a single small binary with output quality close to LaTeX.

Key features

One note = one book. The manifest note holds the metadata and the table of contents through wikilinks. Chapters and sections live in their own notes.
No required tag, folder or filename. Any Markdown note can be used as a manifest.
EPUB and PDF. Configurable PDF engine (Typst by default; xelatex / tectonic / weasyprint available).
Validation before export. Missing chapters, broken wikilinks, and missing required metadata are surfaced with a clear report — no half-baked exports.
Per-book overrides. A book_export: block in the manifest’s frontmatter overrides plugin-level defaults (output folder, PDF engine, formats, TOC depth, page-break behaviour, extra Pandoc flags).
Page setup. Page size, margins, line spacing, and base font size — globally or per book, translated to the right mechanism for each PDF engine.
Front matter & full-bleed cover. Roman-numbered front matter with a clean reset to page 1, and a cover image that fills the first page (PDF) or becomes the EPUB cover.
Quick to reach. Export from the command palette, a ribbon icon, or a note’s right-click menu.
Manuscript preview. A dedicated command writes the compiled .md and opens it — useful for checking what Pandoc will see.

Why Pandoc?

Pandoc is the industry-standard document converter. There is no production-ready library port for JavaScript / Node, and bundling Pandoc itself is impractical (multi-platform binary, hundreds of MB). The plugin treats Pandoc as a hard prerequisite — that’s the price for high-quality output. Install once, export forever.

Quick start

Install the plugin (manual install or via BRAT).
Install Pandoc. For PDF, install Typst (recommended).
Open any Markdown note and structure it as a manifest (see Usage).
Export it — from the command palette (Book Exporter: Export current book to EPUB / PDF / all formats), the book ribbon icon, or the note’s right-click menu.

About

Created by Sébastien Dubois. Source code, issues and roadmap on GitHub.

If this plugin helps you ship a book, buy me a coffee ☕.