This weekend I managed to climb the steepest part of the learning curve with formatting a book using LaTeX.
Watch this space, as I should be able to complete and publish this proof of concept pretty quickly. If this book works out to be worth my time, you can expect quite a bit more publishing from me soon.
@lwriemen I found an existing class for technical books that does most of what I want, although I have had to do some modifications so it isn't perfect.