Saving a collection as a book

A collection you can keep

When a collection is in an order — a run of stories by date, say — you can see all of it at once as a single document: a cover with the collection's name, a list of contents, then every chapter one after another, and at the end a list of where each one came from.

It is the same words in the same order you would read a page at a time. This is simply the whole of it, laid out the way a book is.

If the collection has a picture to use on the cover, it is on the front. If it does not, the name alone is the cover — that is not a fault, and nothing is missing.

Saving it as a PDF

1. Open the collection from your circle's main page and choose Book when offered.
2. Choose Save this as a PDF at the top.
3. Give it a moment to be put together, then keep the file wherever you keep things — or send it to somebody who is not in the circle.

The file is made fresh each time from what the collection holds at that moment, so what you save is what you were looking at.

The file holds the whole collection, even if some chapters are still waiting behind Show more on your screen.

Printing it

Some collections also offer Print, which prints exactly the document on your screen, so choose Show more first if more chapters are still to come. Each chapter starts on a fresh page, and a heading is never left stranded at the foot of one.

If you do not see Print, that collection is not set up for printing. You can still choose Save this as a PDF and print the file afterwards.

When a collection can't be turned into a book

If you don't see Book, that collection can't be turned into a book. Usually it isn't in order yet: there's no settled order for its chapters to follow, and numbering them would mean inventing one. Collections with something to go by — a date on each post, for instance — are the ones that can make books.

A few other things we'll tell you if they happen: a collection with nothing in it yet has nothing to bind; a very large collection can be too big for one book; and if something changed while the book was being created, refresh the page and try again.

What is in it, and who can see it

A book holds exactly what you can already see in that collection, and nothing else. If part of your circle's history is in the archive, it is not in your book either.

Once you have saved the file it is yours. Sending it to somebody outside your circle is your choice, and it gives them nothing else — not the circle, not the posts, nothing that isn't in that collection.