Ask HN: Best tool for writing an e-book

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3443441

by mixmax • 15 years ago

9 15 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

One of the things I've decided to get done in 2012 is to write an E-book about living on a boat, partially because of some of the feedback I've gotten here on HN when I've mentioned that I live on a boat. It seems like a good niche that hasn't really been covered well before.

Anyway, I've looked around for the right software for such an endeavor, and haven't really found anything that seems like the perfect tool for the job. I know that quite a few people here have written e-books, so presumably someone else here has had the same problem and has some experience they'll hopefully like to share.

Here are my main criteria:

- It needs to be an online tool like Google docs, since I'll be writing and reviewing from different computers (some kind of solution with dropbox and a native program could work too..).

- It needs to be able to handle large amounts of text (obviously...)

- It needs to be able to handle formatting of both text, graphics and pictures in a simple way. An e-book about living on a boat will include lots of pictures with descriptions, etc. I'm thinking that the optimal output would be HTML, since this is so standardised that it will be easy to convert to all the different formats for ebooks later.

- It needs to have a good overview, so I can easily shuffle between different chapters. Eg. not just one long file.

Any ideas or suggestions?

DanielBMarkham2• 15 years ago

Having just wrote a blog last week, "E-books are not easy!" I really can't tell you that it's going to be easy :)

I wrote mine by looking at the EPUB format and setting up gedit and a bash script. Here's a nice guide for all of it: http://www.jedisaber.com/eBooks/Introduction.shtml. Once you run the script, there's a nice little epub-checker over here: http://threepress.org/document/epub-validate/

From there, Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/) will load/translate your epub file. Also it will load it to your devices for checking. As much as I like complaining about formats and such, I found this process very similar to writing a website -- lots of xhthml and xml. Nothing too tough.

Once you're done, then there's finding a publisher. Amazon will take a MOBI file, LuLu takes an epub, etc.

There are a zillion details to writing an e-book. If your question is narrowly-targeted at "how do I physically make an e-book" then the answer is not so bad. I did it all from scratch. There are a bunch of third-party tools that will help you also.

mixmax3• 15 years ago

Thanks Daniel :-)

DanielBMarkham2• 15 years ago

One note -- one of the mistakes I made early on was moving to xhtml too soon. I found it was easier to edit and rewrite in MS Word (or whatever), then copy-and-paste over to xhtml when I was getting close to publish. Otherwise, if you're doing it all by hand and have a bunch of chapters and formatting and such, refactoring can be a bear.

nsfmc• 15 years ago

The best tool is probably whatever you use to make webpages.

epub is basically a simple variant of html that uses xml to deal with chapters and assets. You zip the whole bundle up and rename it and bam! epub!

http://blog.threepress.org/ is probably the best and most useful resource for learning about this sorta thing, half of the stuff is random tech and the other half is stuff to get it done.

another thing: amazon's kindlegen is actually a great resource if you're targeting that platform. You can generate a mobi file pretty easily and their example is actually incredibly resource-rich.

But really, the whole thing is just a webpage wrapper with limited css and no js, so go nuts and have fun.

mixmax3• 15 years ago

I'm actually considering doing a small webapp with a treeview on the left side of the screen (http://www.jstree.com/) and one of the many HTML editors on the right. That way I'll be able to shuffle around chapters easily (each node in the tree would be a chapter, and it's easy to create sub-chapters) and just write stuff in the HTML editor.

At the end you can have a "view all" button that puts all the chapters together and presents them as a HTML page.

ErikRogneby• 15 years ago

Are you looking to sell it on the Amazon Kindle? If so then it will need to be in doc format. https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A2RYO17T...

If you are comfortable with MS Word, it is available online: http://office.live.com/

I think the most important thing is that whatever you use it be something you are comfortable with.

ohgodthecat• 15 years ago

I'd say if you like markdown or text files you should take a look at pandoc and using it to convert to your epub see here: http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/epub.html

simon• 15 years ago

I use Pandoc and find it very helpful.

I create my sermons in Pandoc's extended Markdown format and then side-load them to my Nook. Sometimes it is good to be the geekiest pastor around.

I have also found that Pandoc is still being actively worked on. My version was from last spring and I just found out that a couple of releases had been produced and that now it had a new feature I was wondering about where it can explicitly add a cover image.

polyfractal• 15 years ago

I've seen Leanpub (http://leanpub.com/) mentioned in the last few ebook threads. If I understand correctly, you write in markdown and save it to a shared Dropbox folder. They handle all the compiling for you.

I'm writing an ebook about nootropics right now and am using Scrivener. It's really great for organizing and rearranging your content. It's an executable, but if you save the files to Dropbox you can work on it anywhere (which has Scrivener installed)

revorad• 15 years ago

Try this - http://liberwriter.com/

riskish• 15 years ago

isn't adobe indesign the most popular choice for this?

svmegatron• 15 years ago

Boat living high five! My wife and I lived on a boat for the last two years; we're back on land now while we downsize to a smaller boat.

If there's a HNer out there who wants to try this, I have a boat for sale that's fully equipped for liveaboard mobile consulting!

mixmax3• 15 years ago

where's it located?

jason_slack• 15 years ago

I am using Ulysses from "The SoulMen"

http://www.the-soulmen.com/ulysses/

OS X only though.

cotsog• 15 years ago

Have a look to the new kid on the block: http://pressbooks.com.

Ask HN: Best tool for writing an e-book

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