The last ebook I published was six years ago and a lot about the way I think I would do it has changed. Primarily I think I would change from writing it in word to writing it in Markdown and then converting it to other formats as needed.

Why Write Ebook In Markdown

Well there are several reasons why I like the idea of it better.

1. Plain text editor means write anywhere and still be able to format.
2. Plain text editor means no dependance on propritary software.
3. Plain text means easy for using git for version tracking. Big deal here.
4. Markdown means splitting into multiple files easily – for example by chapter.
5. Markdown means one master format that can be converted to all the others as needed.

Converting my Original Word Doc to Markdown

The original of my book was in doc (written in Microsoft Word). But I was able to convert it seemlessly to markdown with just the following three steps:

1. $ sudo apt-get install pandoc
2. If it was actually doc, then open the file in word or open office and “save as” docx.
3. copy the docx file to whatever directory you want your book files to be located
4. $ pandoc –extract-media . originalfile.docx -o output.md
5. NOTE: The “.” after –extract-media and before originalfile is the basepath you want the media extracted to.A “media” folder is automatically created at that location and the files are extracted into that media folder.

References

Some sources that seem useful. I will probably convert this to a references section as a fill the body of this article out over time, but for now you’ll have to get there yourself to get the info!

1. http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/tgl_open_source.html
2. https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Markdown-Cheatsheet (Markdown cheetsheat)
3. https://medium.com/@davidgrophland/making-an-ebook-from-markdown-to-kindle-cf224326b1a2
4. https://pandoc.org/ (software from converting from Markedown to other formats)
5. https://ebooks.stackexchange.com/questions/65/is-markdown-a-viable-source-format-for-writing-ebooks
6. https://garyhall.org.uk/create-ebook-command-line.html