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Ask HN: What are the best eBook authoring tools today?

62 points by warrenm ↗ HN
I want to make some updates to a [free] ebook I wrote several years ago when Rice University was still running their Connexions service open to the world

I keep the most recent edition of that ebook as a pdf on my blog

What is the current "great ebook creation" toolset that all the Cool Kids™ are running? Is it to refactor it into something like Obsidian notes, connecting them, and exporting to pdf? Is it a 'classic' word processor like Apple Pages or Microsoft Word or Google Docs?

Beyond merely updating/expanding what I wrote previously, I also have a few other ebooks I want to compile - and would like to not learn more than one tool to do this.

27 comments

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BjoernKW
For "Stratospheric - From Zero to Production with Spring Boot and AWS" (https://stratospheric.dev/) we used IntelliJ IDEA.

For a technical ebook with lots of code samples using our trusted IDE just was the natural choice.

Javalicious
"Best" is probably whatever you're familiar with. If your pre-pdf content is in Word, I'd just run with it -- most 'classic' word processors can handle the export to ebook stuff just fine. I've done exports from Apple Pages without issue.

That said -- if you're looking for a layout that reflows based on the screen size (read: more suited for mobile devices), you might want to look at exporting to .epub rather than .pdf.

__rito__
I make some long notes for students that I am sometimes teaching.

I use Jupyter Notebook, and use export to PDF feature. It renders the code, the text, and LaTeX equations perfectly.

I have also written stuff in Markdown and converted them to EPUB and PDF via pandoc. But there were no equations there. I used Obsidian as the editor.

Don't really know what will fit your need. If it were up to me, I would have used LaTeX- end to end. There are just a lot of tools and packages, and online help available. I wrote my Master's Thesis- fully in LaTeX.

I have done some technical review for Packt Publishing, and they use MS Word for everything.

Antitoxic6185
What resources would you recommend a beginner to read when they are just starting with latex? I find it a bit hard, especially when it comes to spacing and stuff.
drakonka
For ebooks that I publish to sell, I use Vellum (Mac only). But if it was more of a PDF only kind of thing, without needing to be optimized for traditional book formatting or ereaders, I'm guessing exporting to PDF through something like Word would be plenty good enough.
sparker72678
This violates the "One Tool" constraint that OP requested, but the Standard Ebooks tool chain is available on Github for anyone interested: https://github.com/standardebooks/tools
robin_reala
Worth noting that the create-draft command takes a --white-label flag to remove SE branding on a new project.
davidgerard
Many things can generate an epub. You need one that passes epubcheck to go on Smashwords/Draft2Digital which gets you into Apple Books and all the even more minor bookstores. (Kindle doesn't care.)

I understand that Apple Pages outputs standard-compliant epub that can go straight onto Apple Books/SW/D2D.

Calibre does not. The Calibre authors think that epubcheck is trash and if you follow it, your books won't quite be right on the widest variety of epub readers, which is what they aim for. Beware.

When I tried Pandoc it didn't output a compliant epub, I'm told it does now.

Don't just run and hope - check the output against a variety of readers. You will hit issues.

(e.g. one I only found out about because someone just happened to use a Kobo reader.)

You may have to edit XHTML files in a .zip that has to be ordered in a particular way. (I hate epub so much.) Having done this, I don't recommend it at all. Here's my guide for people who've made poor life choices, e.g. me: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2020/11/05/calibre-epub...

tl;dr if you have a Mac I'd just see what Pages can do for you. If not, you're gonna have fun!!

abdullahkhalids
Please note that Calibre has an ebook editor inside it that can help you fix you at least small issues.
davidgerard
yep! per the linked post, I am very familiar with it :-) It's great!
warrenm
TIL: there is an "Export to ePub" option in Apple Pages :)

I have always done the ⌘-P and select PDF Save as PDF... option from all my Mac apps

iainctduncan
Scrivener is worth checking out too. It compiles to epub and is a dedicated writing ide essentially.
msmagh
I've used Asciidoctor as publishing tool chain. It compiles to epub, pdf. Very easy to configure CI using GH actions. Plugins are also available for vscode and intellij.
billconan
I'm writing markdown files and using pandoc to build pdf.

I don't like writing latex directly, because I also want to make html based ebooks, because html ebooks can reflow according to different screen sizes.

epakai
Org mode exports XHTML, then I use a couple hundred lines of python with eBookLib and Beautiful Soup to smash out an epub.

Org mode is happy to do HTML, and LaTeX (for pdf generation) export as well.

I've seen nice things out of asciidoc, and it has an EPUB3 exporter. There's always pandoc if you want something super versatile.

johannesrexx
I write in Markdown using MindForger. Each chapter gets its own Markdown file. Plus additional Markdown files for frontmatter and backmatter.

Quarto converts the entire kit and kaboodle into HTML (for previewing), ePub, PDF and if you want it, AsciiDoc and DOCX.

davidhbolton
I recommend Jutoh. It's a commercial (but not expensive) cross-platform system written by the WxWidgets creator Dr. Julian Smart. It's on Jutoh.com.

It's very good with images, tables and code.

Tomte
I din‘t use it myself, but people around me swear on Vellum. It‘s Mac only, though.
dexterlagan
Racket + Scribble -> Latex + HTML + PDF? Works for me...