Overleaf - LaTeX: Books and Dissertations

To write a book or dissertation in LaTeX, it is recommended that you change your document class to book. By using the article class book, you can add chapters to your document.

\documentclass{book}

Another document class that may be useful in writing longer documents with chapters is the report class.

The ideal way to add chapters to your LaTeX document while writing a book is by creating a separate file for each chapter. These individual chapter files do not need a preamble. All you need to add at the beginning of each chapter file is the name of the chapter using the \chapter{..} command.

\chapter{Introduction}

This is my first Chapter.

Using the \input{..} command in your root document (titled main.tex by default), you can add in your chapters.

\begin{document}

\maketitle

    \input{Chapter1}

    \input{Chapter2}

    \input{Chapter3}

\end{document}

You can further add a table of contents to your document using the \tableofcontents command. This command automatically uses the information entered for each chapter to generate a table of contents for your document. 

\begin{document}

\maketitle

\tableofcontents

    \input{Chapter1}

    \input{Chapter2}

    \input{Chapter3}

\end{document}

Other useful sections to add to your book or dissertation could be a list of tables or figures.