Better Books with LaTeX

Retired

This book is no longer available for sale.

Better Books with LaTeX

Self-Publish on Amazon and Google

About the Book

Bundled with this book is a template that will give you a head start in your publishing process. In fact, this very book was produced with the same template. You can check out the template here.

Still unsure whether this book is for you? 

  • Are you a first-time author with a complete manuscript that you are ready to publish
  • Or do you write novels in Word but now want to write a non-fiction book
  • Perhaps you are a professional editor seeking to expand your services from merely editing Word files to helping to release books online? 
  • Are you spending a lot of time indexing or managing bibliographical references? 
  • You may already be a LaTeX expert who wants to publish your work as an e-book. Are you planning a series and need to reuse text blocks? Are you looking for ways to share your work and collaborate with others? Are you looking for support to help you with diagrams and graphics?

Besides providing you with a free, ready-to-use template (for the new Overleaf platform) to publish your next book, Better Books with LaTeX can teach you:

  •  Advantages of using LaTeX instead of Word.
  • The basics of LaTeX to get you started and to make small adjustments to the template included with this book.
  • Special requirements for final polishing (images, blank spaces, page breaks, etc.) to make a professional-looking book / e-book.

 And how to:

  • Convert a LaTeX document into a Kindle e-book in order to sell it on Amazon or Google.
  • Structure your book (foreword, preface, publisher information, table of contents, glossary, ...) within a LaTeX project.
  • Better manage bibliographical references in order to save time and reduce mistakes.
  • Better manage indexes in order to save time during index creation and after page changes.
  • Re-use glossary items and other text blocks to save time when writing a series.
  • Create a book cover, add LaTeX graphics, and work with a designer to help you create an appealing book that sells.

 

 

About the Author

Clemens Lode
Clemens Lode

What would lead a computer scientist to write about publishing books with LaTeX? Clemens Lode has a passion for clean design and streamlined workflows in software projects. The same methods can be applied to publishing and typesetting. In this book, he explains the provided book template—file by file—so that you can adapt it to your needs and concentrate on actually writing and marketing the book.

 

With his Better Books series, Clemens Lode covers the entire publishing process, from your initial concept to marketing your book on Amazon or Google. The focus of this book is to organize your book's files, images, and formatting, as well as the automated process of uploading your book to a publisher. The focus of Writing Better Books the Agile Way is to organize your content and project as a whole.


Table of Contents

1  Comparison of Word and LaTeX

2  Generate Your First E-book

 2.1  LaTeX Support

 2.2  Copy the Template

 2.3  Create a PDF

 2.4  Create HTML Output

 2.5  Convert HTML to Kindle

 2.6  Versioning

3  Filling the Template

 3.1  Front Matter

 3.2  Main Matter

 3.3  Back Matter

4  LaTeX Basics

 4.1  Basic Formatting

 4.2  Lists

 4.3  Verbatim Text

 4.4  Chapters and Sections

 4.5  Tables

 4.6  Footnotes

 4.7  Images

 4.8  TikZ Graphics

5  Bibliography and Citations

 5.1  Getting Bibliographical Information

6  Index Creation

 6.1  Indexing in Word

 6.2  Indexing in LaTeX

7  E-Book / PDF Specific Content

 7.1  Switching from XeLaTeX to pdfLaTeX

8  Template Management

 8.1  Template Library Files

  8.1.1  Packages File

  8.1.2  Language Selector

  8.1.3  Bibliography

  8.1.4  Book Format

  8.1.5  Fonts

  8.1.6  Chapter Design

  8.1.7  Header and Footer

  8.1.8  TikZ Initialization

  8.1.9  Table of Contents

  8.1.10  Boxes

 8.2  Core Files

9  Polishing for Print

 9.1  Clean up Empty Space

 9.2  Left Hand / Right Hand Pages

 9.3  Clean Up Graphics

10  Polishing for E-book Release

 10.1  Preparing Images for E-books

11  Publishing on Amazon KDP

 11.1  E-book Publishing

 11.2  Paperback Publishing

12  How to Create Cover Graphics

 12.1  Download KDP Template

 12.2  Front Cover Structure

 12.3  Back Cover Structure

 12.4  Spine Considerations

 12.5  Cover Design

13  Publishing on Google Play

 13.1  Creating EPUB Files for Google Play

 13.2  Troubleshooting

 13.3  Registering at Google Play

 13.4  Managing Your Book Library

14  Writing a Series

  Appendix: TeX4ht Configuration

 1  HTML Output Formatting

 

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