[peterarmstrong]

What program did you write the books in, and would Markdown have worked for you as a writing option?

I'm asking since I'm doing customer development for my startup Leanpub, and we're trying to solve this exact problem. As an author, you shouldn't need to pay for PDF, MOBI or EPUB conversion, a storefront, blog theme, etc. You should only need to write the words -- and do your promotion on Twitter, of course.

My cofounder Scott posted above in this thread. Please feel free to email either of us if you have any questions; I'm [e-mail].

[bloggergirl]

I saw Scott's post and instantly thought, "Damn, I wish I'd have known about these guys back in October." Looks very cool.

I love the idea of not having to worry about the various formats. That was the worst part for me... and still is, actually, as I haven't done the epub thing yet (just PDF and mobi). WooThemes was great, but, to be honest, my hub set up most of that, so perhaps if I'd been left to do it on my own it might not have been so easy for me. I'll def check Leanpub out.

[davidw]

I'm not so sure you don't have to worry about the formats. PDF can give you a much richer visual experience than, say, .mobi can. If you go for a lowest common denominator, ok, sure, you can generate both from the same sources, but likely you'll get a fairly plain looking PDF.

[peterarmstrong]

There's nothing wrong with a simple, clean PDF. A book is great because of the words, not any fancy formatting. These are books, not magazines. If your book is worth reading, it's worth reading with any decent layout.

Of course, there are exceptions to this. For example, books for very young children are very much about layout, art, etc. Also, books that are really multimedia projects, with heavy images, embedded video, etc are exceptions.

However, these exceptions are the minority. The vast majority of books are just words and figures. An author can create this themselves, writing in Markdown and creating their own figures. Will it be as polished as what a publisher would produce? No, of course not! Will it be all the reader really needs and wants? Definitely!

This is 90% of the value, and it's something that the author needs to produce. This is true even when working with a traditional publisher.

For technical books, business books (like startup books) and fiction books, all a reader really wants is the words and (if applicable) figures. In bookstores, things like nice glossy covers, layout, etc are important because people flip through books and make purchasing decisions. For example, this is why technical books have large indexes: people look at the index when making purchasing decisions.

On the internet, people make purchasing decisions based on Twitter, reviews, the book landing page, sample book content, price, etc. So that's what we focus on at Leanpub.