
Ask HN: What software can I use, that runs on Mac, to write a book? - iDemonix
I&#x27;m writing a book on basic monitoring for DevOps engineers, just for fun really and something for my CV. BookPrintingUK will print from a PDF, I&#x27;m aware I could use MarkDown, and I could use LeanPub - but I want a physical book.<p>Can anyone recommend some software they&#x27;ve used to write a book?
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100ideas
Try the gitbook editor by
[https://www.gitbook.com/](https://www.gitbook.com/), then export as pdf.

You can write in markdown or asciidoc, revision content in git/github, export
to pdf or ebook, and develop your layout with a custom theme
([https://toolchain.gitbook.com/themes/](https://toolchain.gitbook.com/themes/)).

Asciidoc + custom theme is probably feature-rich enough for you to accomplish
whatever content organization + layout you want.

Gitbook has some kind of subscription model if you use their site, but the
editor is free I believe.

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100ideas
O'Reilly Media has shared some of the toolchain they've developed internally
to help their book authors create content.

[https://github.com/oreillymedia/atlas_book_skeleton](https://github.com/oreillymedia/atlas_book_skeleton)

[https://github.com/oreillymedia/orm_book_samples](https://github.com/oreillymedia/orm_book_samples)

In particular, you might be interested in the asciidoc_only folder in that
second repo. Potentially you could author your book with the same asciidoc
structure... then see if O'Reilly wants to publish it.

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oddlyaromatic
I've heard good things about Scrivener from several authors.

