Creating a Book Map in DITA

If you want to create a traditional book in DITA, you can use a book map to organize your topics into a book. A DITA book map is a specialized type of map, intended for creating output that is structured like a book. A book map allows you to add book-specific elements such as frontmatter, part, chapter, appendix, and backmatter to the map. How these book-specific elements are processed for publication is up to the processing script for each media. See the DITA documentation for details.

You can find additional support for creating books in DITA in the DITA for Publishers plugin, which is included with .

To create a book in DITA using a book map:

Create a new book map. File > New > Framework templates > DITA Map > map > Bookmap.
Create the structure of your book by adding the appropriate book sections and defining containers for chapters and any appendices. To add sections to a book map, or children to a section, right-click the book map or section icon and choose Append child. The selections offered in the Append child and Insert After menus will adjust depending on the element they are applied to. Consult the DITA documentation to fully understand the structure of a DITA book map and where to create each element.
Create special elements like an index and a table of contents. The index and table of contents will be generated by the build process, based on the content of the map and the topics it points to.
Add topics to your chapters to add content to your book. You may find it easier to manage if you use sub-maps to create the content of your chapters. This keeps your book map from becoming long and difficult to manage.