@reactwright/template-book

Long-form book template for the Reactwright document engine. Trade-paperback dimensions (5.5" × 8.5"), chapter-based flow with per-chapter running headers, a serif body face suitable for sustained reading, and conventional front-matter / back-matter section roles.

When to use this over alternatives

• Pick @reactwright/template-book for novels, memoirs, short story collections, or any long-form chaptered prose destined for printed-book dimensions.
• Pick @reactwright/template-essay for a single MLA-style essay.
• Pick @reactwright/template-report for technical reports.

Format conventions

• Page: 5.5" × 8.5", trade paperback. twoSided: true so running chrome mirrors on facing pages.
• Margins: 0.75" all sides (uniform — see "Limitations" below for asymmetric-binding margins).
• Body: Georgia 10.5pt, line-height 1.35.
• Title page (role="title-page"): title 22pt bold centered, author/subtitle 12pt centered.
• Front-matter sections (role="front-matter"): centered heading in small caps with extra letter-spacing, centered paragraphs. Use for copyright, dedication, epigraph.
• Chapter sections (role="chapter"): page break before each chapter, large centered "Chapter N — Title" heading positioned a third of the way down the page, justified body paragraphs with 1.5em first-line indent (0 indent on the paragraph that follows a heading).
• Section heads inside a chapter: 11pt bold italic, no numbering.
• Block quotes: 18pt left/right indent, no italic, no first-line indent.
• Back-matter sections (role="back-matter"): page break before, centered heading without numbering. Use for afterword, acknowledgments.
• Running headers (page 2+): chapter title on the inside (gutter) edge, book title on the outside (fore) edge — both italic 9pt.
• Footer: page number on the outside corner, 9pt.

Usage

import "reactwright/jsx";
import { Template } from "@reactwright/template-book";

export { Template };

export default function MyBook() {
  return (
    <document title="My Novel" author="A. Author">
      <section role="title-page" title="My Novel">
        <p>A. Author</p>
      </section>

      <section role="front-matter" title="Copyright">
        <p>© 2026 A. Author</p>
      </section>

      <section role="chapter" title="The First Day">
        <p>It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.</p>
        <p>The body continues here…</p>
      </section>

      <section role="back-matter" title="Acknowledgments">
        <p>For those who made this possible.</p>
      </section>
    </document>
  );
}

Limitations

• Asymmetric binding margins (wider inside margin for gutter bind, narrower outside margin) are not currently expressed: the engine does not yet expose marginInside / marginOutside on @page. The template uses uniform 0.75" margins as a compromise. Deferred to future engine work.
• Roman-numeral front-matter pagination (lowercase roman for front matter, arabic restarting at 1 for body) is not implemented. The engine's <page-number /> always emits counter(page) as an integer. Deferred to future engine work; the workaround is to treat the front matter as unnumbered or accept arabic numbering.
• Drop caps on the first paragraph of each chapter are not expressed in the default rules — the styling dialect does not yet promote initial-letter / ::first-letter first-letter sizing as a typed declaration. Authors can opt in by adding a role-rule with dropCap (see story-bible mockup) or by writing a small per-book rule against pass-through CSS via the standard role mechanism.

Implementation notes

Styling is expressed entirely via the styling dialect (<styles> + <rule>). The exported BOOK_CSS is an empty string. Section roles (title-page, front-matter, chapter, back-matter) are plain author-side roles — the template's rules use the within: { kind: "section", role: "<name>" } selector to scope chapter typography. Adding a new section role to the book template is a matter of adding a few <rule> bindings against the same shape.