Ask HN: What software can I use, that runs on Mac, to write a book?

3 points·iDemonix··3 comments

I'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'm aware I could use MarkDown, and I could use LeanPub - but I want a physical book.

Can anyone recommend some software they've used to write a book?

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Try the gitbook editor by 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/).

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.

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/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.

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

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