i've developed a format called "zen markup language"
-- z.m.l. for short -- that will transform raw-ascii e-texts
like those from project gutenberg into powerful e-books.
i'll be revealing it soon.
meanwhile, you can look at john gruber's "markdown"
--
http://www.daringfireball.net/projects/ -- to see
a similar form of non-markup markup. markdown is
interesting because it bridges to xhtml, whereas z.m.l.
is meant as a standalone format displayed by a viewer
that i have programmed.
-bowerbird