Book Publishing with the Wolfram Language

presented by Wolfram Media

Overview

Introduction to Wolfram Media

Showcase of past Wolfram publishing projects

Opportunities for author support

Publishing formats for tech-centered books

Interactive demonstration: our publishing toolset

Wolfram Media 
Book Production & author support Staff

Managing Editor: Paige Bremner

Publishing Assistant: Treyton Jansen

Production Specialist: Todd Akers

What we do

We are a small press that focuses on publishing books about the use of Wolfram technology

wolfram-media.com

We also support authors as they work on publishing books about Wolfram technology with other publishers

Some Past Publishing Projects

Introduction to Machine Learning by Etienne Bernard

Published by Wolfram Media in 2021

First published through print on demand; later with traditional print run

Some Past Publishing Projects

Hands-on Start to Wolfram Mathematica and Programming with the Wolfram Language by Cliff Hastings, Kelvin Mischo and Michael Morrison

Third edition published by Wolfram Media in 2020

Updated for new functionality in Wolfram Language (image processing, machine learning, etc.)

Hands-on Start to Wolfram|Alpha Notebook Edition by Cliff Hastings and Kelvin Mischo

Published by Wolfram Media in 2020

Intended for a younger audience

Some Past Publishing Projects

Introduction to Statistics with the Wolfram Language by Juan H. Klopper

Published by Wolfram Media in 2020

Sold as a print-on-demand title through Ingram Lightning Source

Some Past Publishing Projects

Mastering the Black Box of Statistics and Research Design by Bruce Schneider

Published by Wolfram Media in 2019

Prepared entirely by the author, sold as a zip file of notebooks on the Wolfram Store

New and Upcoming Projects

A New Kind of Science 20th Anniversary Limited Edition
Boxed Set by Stephen Wolfram

New from Wolfram Media in 2022

Contains one all new book: Twenty Years of A New Kind of Science

Includes a gallery of art inspired by A New Kind of Science

New and Upcoming Projects

Metamathematics: Foundations & Physicalization by Stephen Wolfram

Coming soon from Wolfram Media in 2022

Hundreds of full-color layered graphics rendered in high resolution produced by Mathematica

New and Upcoming Projects

A Field Theory of Games: Volume 2 by Gerald H. Thomas

New from Wolfram Media in 2022

Available only as a Kindle ebook

Opportunities for Author Support

Support for working with other publishers

Support for adding ebooks to the Wolfram store

Full-service publishing

Author Support for Working with Other Publishers

Author Support for Working with Other Publishers

What we can provide when you work with another publisher:

Assistance with formatting and pagination of .nb content

Support for code-related questions; we can connect you with a developer that works in the relevant area

A listing for your book on our Wolfram Books site for increased viability

Mention of your book in a Wolfram blog post to help with marketing

Benefits of Working with other Publishers

Our support is provided at no additional cost

You are free to negotiate contract and royalties with your publisher as you see fit

You get the benefit of your chosen publisher’s editorial and distribution resources

Commercial use of content produced with Wolfram Technology depends on your license type. Contact your sales rep with further questions.

Adding ebooks to the Wolfram Store

We offer a publishing option where you produce your book as a zip file not notebooks and we package it up to sell on our store

You produce ready-to-publish notebooks on your own and send them to us

We “sign” and add a registration screen

This means code in the notebook can be rerun, but not modified withing the original notebook

It can still be copied into a new notebook and modified there

The zip file of notebooks can be registered using a code provided to the user when they purchase the book on our store

We can provide an ISBN

Benefits of ADDING your book to the wolfram store

For the author

Full control over the quality and formatting of your content and the freedom to hire freelance editors and designers of your choice

Maximum control over the timeline of your project

Ability to choose list price

Benefits of ADDING your book to the wolfram store

For the audience

Access to dynamic content that does not lend itself to print

Features such as internal and external linking, custom popups and navigation features, and even forms for submitting practice problems if the author chooses to include them

Easy access to code that can be copied into a new notebook and modified as needed

Ebooks can be produced and therefore sold more cost effectively than print books

Examples of zip files of Notebooks as ebook

Simplest format:

Each chapter is its own notebook and a navigation header with a dropdown table of contents is added

Examples of zip files of Notebooks as ebook

More complex format:

Author designed the book with multiple windows set to open upon registration and interactive features

Interactive Courses

Considering an online course to go with your content?

Example: Introduction to Linear Algebra

Video Courses

Considering an online course to go with your content?

Example: Introduction to Mathematica for Students and Teachers

Interactive or Video Courses

If you are interested in this option, please contact our Wolfram U team at wolfram-u@wolfram.com

Wolfram BookTools Demonstration

Download or Update Wolfram Book Tools

You can find the installer on our website: 
wolfram-media.com/products/resources.html

Steps to Get Started

Open downloaded installer in Mathematica

Click “Install | Update”

A message will appear asking you to restart Mathematica in order to complete the installation

Restart Mathematica

Open the WolframBookTools palette, now located in your palettes menu

The Template

Start by clicking the “New Template” button on the palette

A notebook that looks like this will open:

The Template

You can see several of our pre-formatted styles in context:

Section, Subsection, Subsubsection

Text

Code text

Input/Output

Number Item

Item

We recommend you use these for the bulk of your content.

The Template

Toward the bottom, you’ll see sample end matter for your chapters:

Vocabulary

Exercises

Q&A

Tech Notes

More to Explore

These sections are not required, but are often helpful to your readers.

Finding Another Example

The Wolfram Book Tools Stylesheet is closely modeled off of Stephen Wolfram’s An Elementary Introduction to the Wolfram Language.

The online and print versions of that book are good examples of how the pre-formatted styles can be used.

Setting the directory

Click “Set Draft Chapters Directory” at the bottom of the palette

Either select a directory where content for your book is already stored, or create a new folder where you can store your chapters and click “choose”.

Click “yes” to give Mathematica access to the directory.

Getting Started With Your Own Content

Click the “New Chapter” button on the palette.

Enter the chapter number based on the order of you book. If you are starting with chapter 1, enter “1” and click “OK”.

You will get a new notebook that looks like this:

Each chapter of your book will be its own notebook.

Getting Started With Your Own Content

Replace the word “Chapter” with your chapter title and replace “XXXX” with your first paragraph of text.

Next, save your notebook by clicking “save chapter” in the palette.

Give your chapter a file name and click save to save it in your chosen directory.

From now on, use command + s often to save as you add more content.

Inserting New Cells

Use the “Insert” drop down menu in the docked cell at the top of your notebook to view choices for styles of cells that can be inserted.

For example, choose “CodeText”.

You will get a new cell with the CodeText style applied.

Replace “XXXX” with a line of text describing what you will show with code.

Next, add some code. No need to use the insert dropdown because Input is the default style for a new cell. Click below your CodeText to get the horizontal insertion bar and then begin typing.

Shift + enter is used to evaluate the code and produce the output, just like in a default style notebook.

Inserting New Cells

The same basic process of using the insert  dropdown menu can be used to insert any of the cell types shown here:

The “Comment” style cell is useful for the editing process. You can use it to make notes that will be removed for your final publication.

Inserting New Cells

For vocabulary, you have the choice of a basic 2 column layout or a 3 column layout that would allow you to add more info, such as a symbolic representation of the term.

Inserting New Cells

Add an Exercises section using “Exercises” from the Insert dropdown menu.

Add more exercises to the section using the “Exercise” option from the dropdown.

Use “Q&A | Tech Notes | More” to add a Q&A section, Tech Notes section, and More to Explore section all at once.

You can always delete any of these cells you don’t need. To add another Question, Answer, Tech Note, or More to Explore item, place your insertion bar where you’d like to insert the cell and choose the appropriate item from the Insert dropdown.

You can also use the Insert dropdown menu to add a References section, though we often encourage authors to include all references at the end of the book rather than at the end of each chapter.

The instructional cell can be removed.

The Docked Cell

BookTools notebooks include this docked cell at the top:

We’ve already explored the Insert menu; let’s explore the rest of the options.

The Docked Cell

The Function Name dropdown can be used to either format or format and link a Wolfram Language function name to its documentation page.

To use it, highlight the name of a Wolfram Language function in either a Text or CodeText cell.

Click Link.

The formatting of the function name will change to sans serif.

Clicking the function name will now take you to the function’s documentation page.

Note: this will only work to link built-in Wolfram Language functions.

The Docked Cell

The “Resource Function Link” button can be used to do the same thing for Resource Functions.

The Docked Cell

The “Inline Code” button should be used to apply this sans serif formatting to elements of Text or CodeText that are meant as code, but are not function names.

The Docked Cell

The “Mark Cells” dropdown menu offers some options for marking production-related information.

To use the Mark Cells dropdown, first select the cell brackets for the cell or cells you’d like to mark.

Then choose the appropriate option from the Mark Cells dropdown

Tentative: used to mark cells you are unsure if you will include in your final version.

Print Only: used to mark cells that would be included in a print version of the book, but not an online version.

Web Only: used to mark cells that will be in a web version of the book, but not the print version.

Locked: used to mark cells that should not be re-evaluated. This option can only be used on groups of input and output cells.

The Docked Cell

At this time, the “Index Field” and “Toggle” buttons should only be used if you are working on a book project with Wolfram Media.

The “Index Field” button creates a field where you can type in index terms associated with a given cell and the “Toggle” button hides all of the index fields.

At this time, the the script to compile these fields into an index is only available internally at Wolfram.

Production Tools

A “Production Tools” section of the palette can be expanded to show more tools.

If you are only interested in authoring a notebook to be read by others in a notebook format or if you are working with a publisher, you can probably ignore this section of the palette.

Useful for:

PDF creation

Self publishing

Basics of PDF cREATION

Getting a PDF to look just right can be complicated, but the basic steps of PDF creation are simple.

Under “File” choose “Print Settings”, “Show Page Breaks”

Now you will see black lines across the notebook indicating where a page break will fall, or you may see black tick marks on the cell brackets if a page break will fall in the middle of a cell

If you do not like where the page break is falling, select a cell bracket and then use the “Page Break Above” and “Page Break Below” buttons on the palette to adjust.

You can also adjust cell font tracking, hyphenation, page width, and margins using the appropriate buttons on the palette. If you are only interested in basic PDF creation, leave these all alone and allow Mathematica to make automated decisions.

Next, choose “file”, “save as”

Choose “PDF” as the file format and click “Save”

You will create a PDF

Note: page numbers and running headers can be adjusted via the Options Inspector in Mathematica.

Questions?

Contact: publishing@wolfram.com