I have decided to make a digital version of my commonplace book. The first thing I did was to make a cover for it in Scrivener. If you also want to learn how to compile with your own cover in Scrivener, watch the video below.

How to compile PDF with your own cover in Scrivener – step by step

• • First, have your image ready and import it to your Scrivener document. I made a folder and called it front matter, as Scrivener does in one of the project templates, and uploaded the image directly to this folder.
• • In Scrivener, go to file and click compile at the bottom. Then in the pop-up box choose compile for PDF.
• • Finally, in the same box, click the image icon in the upper right corner and choose your image from the selection. Now you are ready to compile. The document will show as a PDF with your selected cover on it.

Altogether, Scrivener will work well as a home for my commonplace book. The first entry I made was a paragraph from the fiction book The left hand of darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin.

However, I still have to figure out how I want to set it up. For now, I made a folder for the book I am reading and put a new text for quotes, text passages, and ideas from that book in the folder. In order to write down habits and schedules, which is a passion of mine, I also made a template for author info.

The next thing I will look into is how to make the most of the labeling option, search function, and collections. In any case, I am looking forward to seeing what this scrapbook of words will look like over time. As a beginning, it has a nice cover.

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