If you already have a laser printer, a Macintosh or an IBM compatible PC with word-processing software, you can prepare your book for the printing house. It won't be absolutely necessary for you to make any other major purchases, because you can prepare your book with existing equipment. However, you may want to read this series of articles to learn about additional hardware and software that might improve the quality of your book or the ease of production. If you are still deciding on equipment and software, you'll want to make informed choices. Those choices should be based on your budget and your type of book.
Some books require specialized software.
For example, a book containing many illustrations requires software that handles illustrations easily and efficiently. For a book that uses an occasional equation, you may be able to create the equations just by using the Symbol font. However, if the book is filled with equations, you need software specialized for equations. Sending the Manuscript to the Printing House Your hardware and software choices also depend on the method you want to use to send your book to the printer. Since you want to do your own typesetting, we won't discuss the expensive option of sending files to a typesetter who would produce linotype films for use by the printer.