Ask HN: How do you guys write your ebooks?

9 points by nanexcool 11 years ago | 12 comments

I'm thinking of writing an ebook for a very specific niche. I have no idea where to start software-wise.

Ideally, I would like to write and add images, and then have the software export to HTML and PDF/mobi. I think that's about it. Not looking for anything fancier than that.

Thanks!

guynamedloren 11 years ago |

I'm working on some software in this area (https://www.penflip.com/). A book is a basic git repository holding a collection of markdown files and images, which are compiled into PDF/epub/html with a single click in the browser. There's a web UI that essentially wraps git functionality, which has proven useful for collaborating with (and receiving feedback from) non-technical people. It's pretty simplified.

Several open sourced tools are used behind the scenes, including some mentioned here (e.g. pandoc).

netcraft 11 years ago |

You might find these links useful: https://github.com/WebBooks/wbb

http://easybook-project.org/

http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/epub.html

https://draftin.com/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7822057

That last link for pollen is very interesting IMO.

nanexcool 11 years ago | |

Thanks, those are very useful!

netcraft 11 years ago | | |

I hope to write a book one day, so ive been collecting resources - I haven't gone very deep with any of the research yet though. Let me know how you get along.

dai_pole 11 years ago |

There's a difference between writing a book and formatting one. For writing you can use anything as long as you can export it to txt/rtf - rtf being the standard in the print world - even vi/vim is usable for this purpose.

For formatting the standard in the print world is InDesign, nothing else comes close. I used to work in the "print" trade, and that is what everyone uses.

thejteam 11 years ago | |

I will second InDesign. I was having a conversation not that long ago with somebody who used to work in the printing business and that is what she used. And she had horror stories of people trying to do things with Word and HTML.

rachelandrew 11 years ago |

I wrote about how I built mine here: http://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2014/01/07/html-epub-mobi...

TL:DR going from HTML to PDF is more of a PITA than you think, .mobi and epub is pretty straightforward.

eponeponepon 11 years ago |

Use DITA or DocBook. There's loads of pretty solid transformations for turning either of them into all three of the outputs you want.

Word processors are always the worst choice.

helen842000 11 years ago |

I use Scrivener & it works well for me. If you have an image-heavy book you may find formatting images a little difficult in some of the e-reader formats. PDF files work well.

nanexcool 11 years ago | |

My book will be about game development so there's going to be lots of images and lots of code. I'll check out Scrivener, thanks!

krrishd 11 years ago |

For technical books, http://gitbook.io is a new choice that I've been using.

moron4hire 11 years ago |

I was going to suggest my project, but you can't add images to your books yet. Le sigh, back to work.