Playbook

Getting Started

This builder works best when your manuscript follows one simple rule:

Every daily entry starts with a single # Heading.

Required files

Main book Markdown: required
Title page Markdown: optional, recommended
Copyright page Markdown: optional, recommended
Cover JPG: optional if the cover checkbox is off

1. Prepare your book file

Your main book file should contain the entries only:

# January 1

Your meditation text.

**Thought For Today:**  
Do the next right thing.

# January 2

Your next entry.

Do not put title page, copyright, or cover instructions in the main book file. Keep the content clean.

2. Prepare title.md

# Hops For Today

Daily Meditations for Craft Brewers  
and the People Who Love Them

D.B. Gurevich

3. Prepare copyright.md

© 2026 D.B. Gurevich

All rights reserved.

Published by Fulcourt Press.

4. Decide about cover

Default is Include cover image in EPUB.

Turn it off if your distributor handles covers separately. If it is on, upload a JPG cover.

If your Markdown begins with a cover reference like ![Cover](cover.jpg), the builder will remove that line from the book body when you also upload the JPG cover, so you do not get a duplicate cover page.

EPUB table of contents

For daily readers, the full date list is optional. A 366-entry TOC is technically valid, but it is often noisy and not useful.

Default recommendation:

OFF for IngramSpark and most daily readers
ON only if you explicitly want every date listed in the EPUB navigation

5. Build

Upload your Markdown files.
Upload your JPG cover if using one.
Click Build EPUB.
Open the browser preview.
Download the EPUB.
Open it in Apple Books, Kindle Previewer, or Calibre.

Invisible character cleanup

Leave Fix invisible characters automatically turned on unless you have a specific reason not to.

This replaces non-breaking spaces,  , and zero-width formatting gremlins before EPUB export. These often come from Word, Pages, PDFs, websites, and rich-text copy/paste.

Cleanup report

When invisible-character cleanup runs, the app shows a before/after report: what it found, what it fixed, and how many artifacts were removed.

This makes the invisible visible before you export or download a cleaned master Markdown file.

Download window

After a build, the EPUB download link stays available for about one hour. Download it before leaving the workflow for the day.

Preview caveat

This is a browser-preview only. Open the downloaded EPUB in Apple Books or Send to Kindle / Kindle Previewer for a real-world sanity check.

Common errors

Text before first heading

Your main book file should start with # January 1 or equivalent.

Level 2 headings

Use #, not ##, for daily entries.

Fake chapters like page003

Delete them. They are ghosts from another tool.

Apple Books XML error

The engine now enforces XHTML-safe line breaks and void tags. Rebuild the EPUB using the current version.

Sample files

The project includes sample files in the samples/ folder. Use them first to prove the system works.

Build EPUB