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I already have a lot of content I have written in Word. What should I do? Should I use Leanpub to write in Word, or should I switch to writing plain text?
I already have a lot of content I have written in Word. What should I do? Should I use Leanpub to write in Word, or should I switch to writing plain text?
Len Epp avatar
Written by Len Epp
Updated over a week ago

[This article was last updated on October 29, 2019. If you think this article needs improvement or updating, please contact us by clicking the little icon at the bottom right of your browser!]

If you've already written a lot of content for your book in Word, we recommend you  use our Upload writing mode to publish your book to our bookstore (and start earning 80% royalties on every sale!). 

Here are some easy-to-follow instructions:

Note: We welcome authors who write in Word, but thought we'd take the opportunity here to explain our position on writing books in the digital age. We believe that writing in plain text and typing out your formatting instructions in a markup text is a better way to write books than Word, OpenOffice, DocBook, anything.

This way of writing is purer, because your manuscript is 100% text, without being wrapped in the computer code that, say, Word uses to make a letter appear bold, which can change or become obsolete. It means that from a single source text, you can easily produce well-formatted ebooks in PDF, EPUB, MOBI, and HTML formats. 

Also, Leanpub is based on the idea that publishing while you write is helpful. We call that idea "Lean Publishing"; see the manifesto for the full spiel :) You can still use our Upload writing mode to publish your book in-progress on Leanpub, by exporting a new PDF file from your Word document whenever you're ready to publish a new version. But if you write using one of our writing modes, this process will be a lot easier!

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