📚 03. Books & Columns

Organize scattered thoughts into structured long-form content.
When individual notes accumulate, or when writing a full technical monograph, course series, or book, FlashNote’s Books & Columns feature provides deep hierarchical architecture.

📑 In This Guide

1. Create Books & Columns
2. Chapter Hierarchy & Reordering
3. Import Notes into Books
4. Compilation & Export
5. Maintaining Living Documents

1. Create Books & Columns

1.1 Why Use Books & Columns?

• Escape Information Fragmentation: Single notes are ideal for temporary thoughts, but cannot substitute for systematic knowledge architecture;
• Immersive Long-Form Authoring: Overview the table of contents tree on the left, while focusing on writing individual chapters on the right.

1.2 Creating Your First Book

1. Click the “Books” icon in FlashNote’s top navigation bar;
2. Click the “New Book (+)” button in the top right;
3. Enter your book title (e.g., Modern Rust Systems Programming or Product Growth Playbook);
4. Choose a cover image, enter a short subtitle and author name, then click Confirm.

2. Chapter Hierarchy & Reordering

The left sidebar of the book detail view provides an interactive Table of Contents (TOC) tree:

2.1 Volumes, Chapters & Sections

• New Volume: Group major parts (e.g., “Volume I: Foundations”, “Volume II: Real-world Practice”);
• New Chapter: Add chapters under volumes or at root level;
• Unlimited Nesting: Support sub-sections to meet the requirements of comprehensive books.

2.2 Drag-and-Drop Reordering

• Intuitive Drag & Drop: Drag chapter cards up and down to adjust reading sequence;
• Automatic Chapter Numbering: Dynamically recalculates Roman or ordinal chapter numbers upon drag or deletion, eliminating manual renaming;
• Cascading Outline Graph: Structure changes cascade automatically across internal cross-references.

3. Import Notes into Books

Ingest your daily scratch notes into structured publications effortlessly:

1. Ingest from Notes: In the “Notes” list, open the card menu (···) and select “Move / Add to Book”;
2. Select Target Volume: Pick the destination book and volume in the tree picker; the note converts into a book chapter;
3. Copy as Duplicate: Alternatively, import a copy of the note to keep the original note intact.

4. Compilation & Export

When writing is complete, click “Export Book” in the top right corner for publication-grade output:

• Structured Markdown Archive: Automatically archives files into folders with a root README.md and indexed SUMMARY.md, ready for GitHub or static site generators;
• Publication TXT Formatting: Paragraph indentations, clean spacing, and page break dividers;
• EPUB E-Book: Generates standard EPUB with cover art, metadata, and full navigation, ready for Apple Books or Kindle;
• Unified PDF Printing: Continuous single-page rendering optimized for high-resolution PDF printouts.

5. Maintaining Living Documents

• Living Document Strategy: Consider setting Chapter 1 as Release Notes & Roadmap;
• Granular Updates: Edit specific chapters without needing to reformat the entire book;
• Version Safety: Differential cloud sync uses monotonically increasing timestamps to ensure conflict-free updates.