self-publishing

April 2, 2021 ยท View on GitHub

Trail guide to self publish books.

After trailing it (as an housing architect), I'm mapping the best path I know to self publish a book.
It might be useful to others doing this lonely journey.

Choosing tools

Markdown, Latex, MS Word, Indesign or Scrivener?

  • Markdown if you want to publish digitally.
  • Latex if you want to print it with maximum quality.
  • MS Word if you want to keep it simple (and unproductive).
  • Scrivener if you are writing a novel.
  • Indesign (or Scribus) if the design of your publication is crucial.

My productivity system

  • I write Markdown on a text editor. Then convert it to Word via Pandoc:

      pandoc myFile.md -f markdown_github -t docx -o myFile.docx

  • And finally I adjust style and publish it as PDF on MS Word.

Why?

  • A text editor is an 'order of magnitude' more productive than a word processor.
  • I can still print it with reasonable quality without learning Latex or Indesign.

Choosing a self publisher

Amazon to self publish paperbacks is the obvious choice.

To investigate

Pollen - A book is a (Racket Lisp) program.