The third, improved, and extended edition of the LaTeX Beginner’s Guide was published this month, March 2026.
Compared to the first edition from 2011 and the second edition from 2021, the book has been thoroughly revised. The code examples were updated to work with current LaTeX classes and packages as used in 2026, so everything compiles smoothly with modern distributions.
This edition also adds new material. There are chapters on creating presentation slides, a closer look at TeX engines and formats, and a section on using AI tools such as ChatGPT to speed up coding, reviewing, and even parts of the writing and publishing workflow.
The book now has about 400 pages and is printed in color, which helps especially with presentation examples and other colored output. As before, it focuses on hands-on examples that show how to structure documents, typeset mathematics, create tables and figures, manage citations and bibliographies, and produce professional PDFs for research papers, theses, or books.
There’s also a companion website at: https://latexguide.org
It hosts all code examples along with an integrated online LaTeX compiler, so you can run and edit the examples directly in your browser—even on a phone or tablet.
The book is available as a printed edition and as a Kindle ebook. If you buy either version, you can also download the DRM-free PDF for free from the publisher’s website: https://packt.link/free-ebook/9781805804574
About the author
Stefan Kottwitz has been active in the LaTeX community for many years, helping users online and building resources around the ecosystem. He has written more than 10,000 forum posts on LaTeX.org alone, providing support and advice to users worldwide.
He maintains several LaTeX community platforms, including the forums LaTeX.org and goLaTeX.de, and the Q&A sites TeXwelt.de and TeXnique.fr. He also runs the graphics gallery sites TeXample.net, TikZ.net, PGFplots.net, Asymp.net and FeynM.net. He runs CTAN LaTeX software mirrors in the EU, UK, US, and Japan, and the TeXdoc.org documentation service.
Stefan is a moderator on TeX Stack Exchange and matheplanet.com, and writes blog posts on LaTeX.net, TeX.co, and TeX-talk.net.
He distilled this experience into several books. In addition to the LaTeX Beginner’s Guide, he also wrote the LaTeX Cookbook and LaTeX Graphics with TikZ with Packt Publishing, both of which were also translated into Japanese by Asakura Publishing.
Find the book here: packt.link/n96Mx For a short time, the third edition is 20% off for a limited number of copies.