Can I customize the layout and styles of my ePub?
About Write themes
StreetLib Write provides you with ready-made graphic themes to apply to your book.
Each graphic theme has specific characteristics such as fonts, styles, chapter formatting, text alignment, and more. These themes are designed for specific literary genres. For instance, you will find themes better suited for academic or biographical books, some for fiction or nonfiction, and others for the detective genre.
For each theme, you will be able to preview the title page, index and beginning of a chapter. This allows you to evaluate characters, text alignment, and graphic composition, helping you choose the one that better suits your book type as well as your personal taste.
Some of the most used themes are Leopardi, Calvino and Isaacson
Here are some of the most used themes. You can find all the other themes available in Write on this page.
Leopardi (the default them)
The Leopardi theme is the most classic and the most widely used. It features a simple, clean, and clear style. The table of contents (TOC) is organized by setting subchapters and sections in italics. Chapters are not numbered, and each paragraph has a small indent.
Calvino
The Calvino theme features a more compact design with reduced spaces between title and paragraph, making it suitable for nonfiction or scientific books. The table of contents is clean, with book parts highlighted in bold and sections in italics.
Isaacson
The Isaacson theme enhances the visual appeal of your book with graphic elements and a romanticized style. It is well-suited for clearly identifying each new chapter and enhancing the author page visually.
Specific themes for cookbooks and poetry
If you’re the author of a cookbook or a poetry book, please select the relevant book type when creating a new book.
Write provides you with a choice between two ideal themes for poetry—Rimbaud and Foscolo—and two others best suited for cookbooks—Norma and Bocuse.
Whether it's poetry or cookbooks, we recommend creating a new book with Write. Copy and paste your text from your file into the Write Editor, organizing the text into various chapters to form the book.
Can I create a personal style?
If you have a specific requirement and are familiar with CSS language, Write provides you with the option to directly modify the code. Here's how to do it:
Ensure that your Write plan is Premium or Unlimited, then go to the content editor of your book or to the book record and click on "Theme".
then on "Create theme".
Provide it with a name, and select the graphic theme you wish to work on from the dropdown menu among those proposed.
Now you can start working on the CSS code based on the content type you wish to edit. For instance, if you want to alter the way chapter titles are rendered, click on the relevant content type ("chapter title"). In the editor window that appears on the right, you can adjust the graphic feature (font size, font, etc.). For example, if you prefer the chapter title to be in lowercase rather than uppercase, you will need to modify the corresponding CSS rule (text-transform) from uppercase to lowercase.
If you only want the first letter of the title to be capitalized, you should use "capitalize" instead of "uppercase".
Attention: the individual CSS declaration "property: value" (in our example: "text-transform: lowercase;") must be pulled out from the CSS comment (that is, the block of text enclosed between /* and */). It must be just outside and always within brackets, otherwise, they won't be applied.
You can also leave just the property to be modified (in our example, that of the text-transform) if you don't need to modify the others.
By clicking on the corresponding icon at the bottom of the navigation bar on the left, you will also be able to intervene similarly on the CSS code regarding:
- TITLE: or title and author's name appearing on the title page of your book
- INDEX of the book: you’ll never have to enter it manually because it’s created automatically by Write, based on the structure of your book
- PDF for printing.
Once you’ve created your theme, for it to be active you need to go to Book Record, click on "Change Theme", then on "My Themes", select the created theme, and then click on "Activate" to the right.