

Ask HN: How do you guys write your ebooks? - nanexcool

I&#x27;m thinking of writing an ebook for a very specific niche. I have no idea where to start software-wise.<p>Ideally, I would like to write and add images, and then have the software export to HTML and PDF&#x2F;mobi. I think that&#x27;s about it. Not looking for anything fancier than that.<p>Thanks!
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guynamedloren
I'm working on some software in this area
([https://www.penflip.com/](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).

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netcraft
You might find these links useful:
[https://github.com/WebBooks/wbb](https://github.com/WebBooks/wbb)

[http://easybook-project.org/](http://easybook-project.org/)

[http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/epub.html](http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/epub.html)

[https://draftin.com/](https://draftin.com/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7822057](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7822057)

That last link for pollen is very interesting IMO.

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nanexcool
Thanks, those are very useful!

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netcraft
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.

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dai_pole
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.

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thejteam
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.

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rachelandrew
I wrote about how I built mine here:
[http://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2014/01/07/html-epub-
mobi...](http://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2014/01/07/html-epub-mobi-pdf-wtf-
creating-an-ebook/)

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

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eponeponepon
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.

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helen842000
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
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!

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

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moron4hire
I was going to suggest my project, but you can't add images to your books yet.
Le sigh, back to work.

