LaTeX to e-book in Detroit

jmmiller · 05-28-2010, 08:46 AM

Good Morning,

I am setting off on my summer project to learn enough about e-book formats to help a friend publish a memoir. Any suggestions would be welcome!

I'm OK with going from LaTeX to PDF and using Ruby on Rails as the interface to produce Postscript or XML sorts of output.

Regards,

John M. Miller M.D.

happy_terd · 05-28-2010, 10:46 AM

Hello and welcome to MR!!!

Robin O'Neill · 05-28-2010, 02:45 PM

Welcome, John.

The best way to get a handle on formatting is to look at books already live on Smashwords or Kindle. Smashwords has a very detailed style guide that's fairly easy to follow. What can I say about Kindle? Indent new paragraphs 5 spaces but not with tab, no space between paragraphs.

It should take you no more than 1/2 hour in Word to make it happen. I have been using Open Office but that's more of a geeky kind of program and not so much geared to manuscripts. Knowing Unix probably helps, I don't but my friend does. I switched to Word and it's more in English but you have tons of hidden coding courtesy of Microscoff.

I will say the more programs you send a file through, the worse off you are. 95% of the time (guessing) I wind up putting the document into notepad to remove all the formatting and then starting over clean.

You can always ask, someone here probably knows the answer. You'll probably get plenty of answers. Most of them conflicting ;-)

Robin

MickeyC · 05-28-2010, 04:41 PM

Hi John and welcome to MobileRead

05-28-2010, 08:46 AM	#1
jmmiller Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2010 Device: none	LaTeX to e-book in Detroit Good Morning, I am setting off on my summer project to learn enough about e-book formats to help a friend publish a memoir. Any suggestions would be welcome! I'm OK with going from LaTeX to PDF and using Ruby on Rails as the interface to produce Postscript or XML sorts of output. Regards, John M. Miller M.D.

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05-28-2010, 10:46 AM	#2
happy_terd Banned Posts: 13,045 Karma: 10105011 Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: Finally made it to Walmart. Device: PRS 420	Hello and welcome to MR!!!

05-28-2010, 02:45 PM	#3
Robin O'Neill Connoisseur Posts: 53 Karma: 60900 Join Date: May 2010 Device: PC	Welcome, John. The best way to get a handle on formatting is to look at books already live on Smashwords or Kindle. Smashwords has a very detailed style guide that's fairly easy to follow. What can I say about Kindle? Indent new paragraphs 5 spaces but not with tab, no space between paragraphs. It should take you no more than 1/2 hour in Word to make it happen. I have been using Open Office but that's more of a geeky kind of program and not so much geared to manuscripts. Knowing Unix probably helps, I don't but my friend does. I switched to Word and it's more in English but you have tons of hidden coding courtesy of Microscoff. I will say the more programs you send a file through, the worse off you are. 95% of the time (guessing) I wind up putting the document into notepad to remove all the formatting and then starting over clean. You can always ask, someone here probably knows the answer. You'll probably get plenty of answers. Most of them conflicting ;-) Robin

05-28-2010, 04:41 PM	#4
MickeyC Grand Sorcerer Posts: 16,731 Karma: 12185114 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Florida Device: iPhone 6 plus, Sony T1, iPad 3	Hi John and welcome to MobileRead

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