---
title: The bookdown Contest
slug: contest
---

We launched [the first **bookdown** contest](https://blog.rstudio.com/2018/07/27/first-bookdown-contest/) on July 27, 2018, and received 43 submissions in two months. Below is the list of award recipients and their **bookdown** applications (see details on [RStudio Community](https://community.rstudio.com/t/16394)):

## Grand prize

Recipient: @pabloc for [Data Science Live Book ](https://community.rstudio.com/t/bookdown-contest-submission-data-science-live-book/13298)

![data-science-live-book|659x500](https://community.rstudio.com/uploads/default/original/2X/1/1991ab69a54a6287fba52b74934ab079521db05d.jpeg) 

Pablo showed the possibility of publishing a book with **bookdown** all by yourself (i.e., self-publishing). If you are interested in self-publishing books, I courage you to read the two blog posts mentioned in the submission, which covered a lot of useful and practical technical tips.

- [How to self-publish a book: A handy list of resources](https://blog.datascienceheroes.com/how-to-self-publish-a-book/)
- [How to self publish a book: customizing bookdown](https://blog.datascienceheroes.com/how-to-self-publish-a-book-customizing-bookdown/)

The book is [open source on Github](https://github.com/pablo14/data-science-live-book) (of course!). I hope you could hesitate no more after seeing Pablo's example, and will enjoy the excitement of having a physical copy of your book in your own hands a couple of months later. I'm sure Pablo will be happy to help if you have any questions on self-publishing.

## Runner Up Prizes

The three recipients and their work:

- @grimbough's **msmbstyle** package: https://community.rstudio.com/t/14998 This is a **bookdown** extension package for the Tufte style. Besides a nice style, it has also provided additional features such as Question/Solution/Exercise blocks. Currently a real book, [*Modern Statistics for Modern Biology*](https://www-huber.embl.de/msmb/), is being written with this style. @grimbough has also tried to port some of the Tufte features to the Bootstrap style.

- @Xiangyun's master thesis at CUMT (China University of Mining and Technology): https://community.rstudio.com/t/12466 and @pranav.pandya's master thesis at Berlin School of Economics and Law: https://community.rstudio.com/t/15350

There were several submissions on dissertation/thesis templates, and the above two were picked because (1) the authors have successfully graduated with their degrees, which means they must have won in the constant fight with their graduate schools (I kind of lost in 2013, so they "made it up" for me to some extent); (2) they provided both PDF and web versions of their theses. Pranav's thesis was based on Chester Ismay's **thesisdown** package. Chester really should have received the award, too, but I think the large number of theses, including Pranav's, is the best award for Chester.

## Honorable Mention Prizes

Recipients and their work:

- @colin's [**backyard** package](https://community.rstudio.com/t/14563). It has basically provided a GUI for **bookdown**. It is absolutely amazing. If it were not still work in progress, I'd have to fight with myself for longer.

- @robjhyndman's [Monash University templates](https://community.rstudio.com/t/11701). Students and faculty in other universities may feel jealousy about these templates, since it seems Monash can escape from the LaTeX world now.

- @jweisber's [book "Odds & Ends"](https://community.rstudio.com/t/15470). It is a beautiful and elegant extension of the Tufte style. I thumbed through the book, and it appeared to be a great book, too!

- @dapeng submitted multiple entries:

  - [Peking University thesis](https://community.rstudio.com/t/13992)
  - [example of really large-scale collaboration on a book](https://community.rstudio.com/t/14259)
  - [mail templates](https://community.rstudio.com/t/14665)
  - [Elsevier papers](https://community.rstudio.com/t/13935)
  - [University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences thesis](https://community.rstudio.com/t/14740)
  - [bookdown template gallery](https://community.rstudio.com/t/14834)
  - [mind maps](https://community.rstudio.com/t/15121)

- @zachbogart and @jtr13's [edav.info/](https://community.rstudio.com/t/15168). When will course notes follow the Wikipedia model?

- @ejkasner's [University of Washington dissertation template](https://community.rstudio.com/t/11646). Features the use of child documents (each chapter as a child document), LaTeX customization, and `bookdown::pdf_document2`.

- @martin.arnold's [interactive companion](https://community.rstudio.com/t/15372) to the well-received textbook *Introduction to Econometrics* (Stock & Watson, 2015).

- @Desautm's [Notes for advanced calculus](https://community.rstudio.com/t/15324) in French (with some interesting LaTeX tricks).

- @robinlovelace's [Geocomputation with R](https://community.rstudio.com/t/15353), a book containing animations, interactive widgets, and shiny apps. Also a great example of collaboration among multiple authors.

- @bubifengyun's [book in Chinese](https://community.rstudio.com/t/15136) with a large amount of LaTeX customizations, and [Shanghai Jiao Tong University thesis](https://community.rstudio.com/t/15268).

- @yimeng's [Renmin University of China thesis](https://community.rstudio.com/t/15367).
