First, get a second-hand G5 Power-Mac, or an iMac with a big screen, stuff lots of memory in it ( http://www.crucial.com ), and install
Scrivener
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html
http://stevenpoole.net/blog/goodbye-cruel-word/

OR, if you consider short-term-cost to be more-important than long-term-results, get ( instead )
Writer’s Cafe’s ( specifically the component called StoryLines )
http://www.WritersCafe.co.uk/

These are *writer’s* tools, for organizing one’s meanings into coherent *writing* of one’s meaning-story. words-stream wordprocessors are incapable of producing best-writing, just as wordprocessors are incapable of producing best-budgeting! ( use spreadsheets for budgeting, instead, right? )

I’m getting a Mac, even though I hate the Apple UI, just because the alternative is to produce a less-organized, less-well written book.

The Second Thing you need, is “Stein On Writing” by Sol Stein.

That is the best self-editing/writing-improvement book I have ever encountered ( more advanced than William Zinsser’s “On Writing Well” ).

The third thing you need, is to know that textbooks usually take 7 years to write!

Do NOT give-up, no-one ever did anything by any method other-than honestly doing-it, and no matter what happens, it is self-improvement work whose intent improves our world, right?

Good.

Oh, yeah:

Organizing from the Inside Out
( Julie Morgenstern )

Corps Business: the 30 *Management Principles* of the US Marines
( David H. Freedman - Fortune senior-editor )

both contain methods of being more effective, that make publishing more-likely.

Lulu.com is for self-publishing. . .

FontFont.com has a font-book, get it, cut out the pages with good-looking-for-your-work fonts, leave ‘em lying ’round so you see ‘em all the time, until you weed-out the fonts that just aren’t “right” for you, & use one of the self-reading fonts that are good. . .

’tis a technique for preventing the “Cheap Shoddy Publishing” impression many self-published books end-up-with. . .

Cheers,

-Antryg