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In regards to Markdown, it is nice but not many publishers are going to work with you if the book is in that format. Odds are you will have to convert it to Mic
by __alexander 2y ago
In regards to Markdown, it is nice but not many publishers are going to work with you if the book is in that format. Odds are you will have to convert it to Microsoft Word so the editors can add recommendations, version control, ask questions, apply templates, etc. I wrote a book in Markdown and converted it to Word after the third revision because editing was so painful.
- gnulinux 2y agoWill publishers not accept Latex?
- themadturk 2y agoWord makes the world go round. Perhaps specialized publishers will accept LaTeX, but most of the industry does not. Writers need to plan to transmit their manuscripts in DOCX format and to receive notes back in the same format. Of course, something like LibreOffice may be compatible enough, depending on how comments are handled.
- gnulinux 2y agoHow does one write something like a math textbook in Word, I'm curious how it's even possible. Do you handwrite every single formula in the point-and-click UI, wouldn't that be extremely time consuming and expensive?
- themadturk 2y agoProbably anyone publishing a math textbook would be happy to receive LaTeX files. Math book publishers are a tiny part of the publishing world.
- azhenley 2y agoManning allows asciidoc.
- __alexander 2y agoThat’s cool to hear.
- dunyakirkali 2y agoI did not know this. Very nice
- ezekg 2y agoSounds like a cool side project that could make some money.
- spudlyo 2y ago> so the editors can add recommendations, version control I assume this means the internal versioning features that Word offers, and not something like Git. I sympathize, I imagine the editing process was rough.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 2y agoIt's honestly not that bad if you have a good relationship with your editor. Git really emphasizes word by word or line by line changes; while publishing, at least in the earlier stages of working with an editor/agent, is much more focused on complete drafts. Getting down into the minutiae of word or line edits usually happens rather late and with a copy-editor. Saving complete drafts, then receiving marked-up copies, worked fine for fiction, at least in my experience. They've been using Word for decades at this point so it's quite formalized. You just follow their instructions (even with file naming conventions). Trying to get a publisher up to speed on Git while your editing is usually just not worth the hassle. Technical writing, though, is a different story. Managing code blocks is pretty essential in git, in my experience. But then you have specialized publishers for those.