Ask HN: Web app/Software for writing books

[philipDS]

I'd like to write a novel and was wondering if there are any good web apps or software for doing it? I'd rather not use Word or something similar, because it annoys me all the time. Maybe some service offers this, something similar to Posterous or Tumblr but really for writing long pieces of text with chapters (i.e. a book)?

Thanks!

[davidw]

You could certainly use LiberWriter for this, and as an added bonus, it'd be ready to publish to Amazon's KDP.

http://www.liberwriter.com

[philipDS → davidw]

I will check this out! Thanks.

[Steer]

Not a web app (but you wrote ..."or software"), but this is one of the main features of Scrivener http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php.

Myself, I would use LaTeX and my favourite editor, but that may have a too-steep of a learning curve for you.

[philipDS → Steer]

I write papers in LaTeX for school, but I'm not really that fluent in it that I could write a book in it... I guess. :)

[Steer → philipDS]

If you already know the basics you are more than halfway there! You will need to find a suitable package for novels of course, but I don't think that you will have problems using it. The requirements for writing a novel in LaTeX will IMHO not be more advanced than when you write papers.

[fractallyte]

You do realize that there are desktop word processors other than Word...?

WordPerfect is equally powerful, but uses a completely different paradigm that most users find far more intuitive (and correspondingly less annoying).

And there's WordStar for DOS, still highly regarded, and considered by some to be the best word processor ever...

[subsection1h]

http://orgmode.org/