How to make my own professional book step-by-step (there is a course or a book that I didn't find?)

Question

Sorry if this question is not doubts about LaTeX per se, but more a question for a guide to making my own book. There is a book or a course or a tutorial available specifically about making my own book step-by-step? Share your knowledge about this topic, please. I want to make my books professionally. That's all. Thank you everyone in advance!

Depending on the type of book, you could also look into ebook software in general. If it's just text and pictures then this is maybe easier depending on your educational background. — Dr. Manuel Kuehner, Nov 28 '20 at 19:51
Have you considered other software that may use an easier to write format on the frontend and then mangle that into LaTeX and subsequently a PDF, for example? Pandoc and mdbook come to mind. Reading the Rust book by NoStarch gave me the feeling that the latter is fairly powerful. Nothing against LaTeX, but I found there are lots of things in my domain of expertise (software development) where characters like _ in identifiers frequently break the paradigm LaTeX advertises, because some characters are harder to pass to commands/macros. — 0xC0000022L, Nov 29 '20 at 20:32
Related question: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/316933/what-to-decide-before-writing-a-math-book — Sir Cornflakes, Nov 29 '20 at 21:51
Consider accepting one of the provided answer in order to close the question. — Dr. Manuel Kuehner, Dec 01 '20 at 01:36
Sorry, everyone, @Dr.ManuelKuehner, this is my first question on StackExchange! — amuniz1, Dec 02 '20 at 02:34

score 12 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 28 '20 at 19:47

12

I suggest reading Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style which is the best book I have come across on the subject. Then there is my A Few Notes on Book Design (> texdoc memdesign) based on my experience in creating books and other publications. After that use the memoir class (> texdoc memoir) which provides many means of creating professional books. (Warning: I'm the originator of memoir.)

Good luck in your endeavours.

answered Nov 28 '20 at 19:47

Peter Wilson

28,066

Wow, I have a lot of materials to read right now, my head is spinning. But thank you for your precious time! – amuniz1 Nov 28 '20 at 19:59

Dr. Manuel Kuehner · Answer 2 · 2020-11-28T19:09:54.293

First of all, this is a very big time effort in my opinion. Let's say 200+ h.
There is the so-called KOMA-Script bundle that is similar to the memoir class.
It comes with a extensive documentation (500+ pages), see https://www.ctan.org/pkg/koma-script (direct link to the PDF file).
The KOMA-Script bundle gives you a lot of tools. If you are serious about "writing a professional book" than this is at least one option that you should consider.
You can also read a book of a "famous" author, for example https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0073FTN5I (by Stefan Kottwitz).
Other than that, it's always good to have a look at What are good learning resources for a LaTeX beginner?.

How to make my own professional book step-by-step (there is a course or a book that I didn't find?)

2 Answers2