Getting started:
your first document
Five steps, from signing in to a finished PDF. Nothing you create is public until you publish it.
1. Sign in
Go to texlode.com/login and sign in with GitHub or with your email address. If you received an invite code, for example on our flier at the Frankfurt Book Fair, enter it on the same page. It activates your account right away, so you skip the waiting list.
2. Open the tutorial or pick a template
After signing in you see Create a document with three choices:
- New opens the template gallery: Book, Monograph, Proceedings, Game Rulebook, and the lightweight Simple Text Editor and Simple Sheet Editor. Paper and Poster are coming soon.
- Import takes a Word, EPUB, or plain-text manuscript and typesets it right away. This is the fastest way to see your own book in texlode.
- Samples opens finished example documents you can explore and change freely.
On your first visit there is also a Tutorial card. It opens How To Publish Your Book with LaTeX, a complete book that explains its own template while you read it. If you are new to LaTeX, start there.
3. Write and watch the page
The editor has two panels side by side. The Text Editor holds your manuscript as LaTeX source; the Print View shows the typeset pages. Every keystroke appears in the Print View within a fraction of a second, with the same line breaks, hyphenation, and page breaks as the final print file.
You can also click into the Print View and type there directly. Click any word in the Print View to jump to its source, and right-click in either panel for quick actions such as inserting an image or formatting text.
The Help menu has a LaTeX Commands reference and Keyboard Shortcuts (press ? anywhere in the editor). You do not need to know LaTeX in advance; most formatting is one right-click away.
4. Add a chapter
The Contents panel on the left lists your chapters. Click + Add new chapter at the end of the list, or right-click a chapter and choose Add new chapter. Drag chapters to reorder them. In a proceedings volume, the same panel offers + Add session and + Add paper instead. If the panel is hidden, turn it on under Panels → Contents.
5. Check and download your files
The Checklists button at the top right opens three tabs: Details shows which document details are still missing, Quality runs the quality checks, and Accessibility runs an accessibility check.
The Publish button next to it opens Your files. There you build and download the print PDF for paperback or hardcover, an e-book PDF, the EPUB for Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo and Draft2Digital, and a ZIP of retailer files. The files download only to you. Below them, each retailer card says which file that store takes and how to upload it.
For other formats, open File → Export...: Word (DOCX), EPUB, IDML for InDesign, the complete LaTeX sources as a ZIP, or a direct export to Overleaf.
Getting help
- Help → Chat Support sends a message straight to us from inside the editor.
- Help → Feature Tips walks through features you might not find on your own.
- Help → Report a Bug and Feature Request open our public tracker on GitHub.
- The other guides cover accessible PDFs, Word versus LaTeX, and conference proceedings in depth.