Minimalist LaTeX Template for Academic Books

June 16, 2026 · View on GitHub

This repository contains a LaTeX template to create an academic book. The template follows typographical best practices and has a minimalist design. It is well suited for research monographs, textbooks, and lecture notes. It is designed so books are comfortable to read and easy to scan, both in print and on screen.

Documentation

The template is documented at https://pascalmichaillat.org/g/.

Illustration

Usage

  • Clone the repository to your local machine.
  • Edit the main file book.tex to set the title, subtitle, author, and date, and to add or remove parts and chapters.
  • Edit the chapter files (chapter1.tex, chapter2.tex, and so on), appendix files (appendixA.tex, appendixB.tex, and so on), preface.tex, and acknowledgements.tex to replace the boilerplate with your content.
  • Replace the figures in the PDF file figures.pdf with the figures to be included in your book (one figure per page).
  • Replace the references in the BibTeX file book.bib with the references to be included in your book.
  • Compile book.tex with pdfTeX. This will generate a PDF file of your book named book.pdf.
  • To build the index, run makeindex after the first pdfTeX run, then run pdfTeX again.

A few files in the repository are required to use the book template but do not need to be modified. These files must remain in the same folder as book.tex:

  • The LaTeX style file book.sty formats the book.
  • The BibTeX style file book.bst formats the bibliography.

The file book.pdf illustrates the output of the template. It will be overwritten when book.tex is compiled. It is not required to use the book template.

Software

  • The template is currently operational with TeX Live 2025 on macOS.
  • Other LaTeX distributions and operating systems may require minor adjustments. Please report any issues to help improve compatibility.

License

This repository is licensed under the MIT License.

Real-world implementation

  • latex-paper – This LaTeX template produces academic papers that follow the same typographic principles as the book template.
  • latex-presentation – This LaTeX template produces academic presentations that follow the same typographic principles as the book template.
  • latex-math – These LaTeX commands simplify writing mathematical expressions. They can be used in combination with this book template.
  • matlab-figures - This MATLAB template produces minimalist scientific figures that can be inserted into your book.