If you want to try a "new" shiny thing (more recent than LaTeX, anyway) you can try reStructuredText, which is a bit more readable than LaTeX (but converts to it for PDF generation, just as it can be converted to HTML, and even odt).

Shameless spam :) http://www.trueelena.org/computers/articles/restructuredtext_for_fiction.html (there are links to other documentation and tools at the bottom)

Signed: an Office-hater who used LaTeX for almost everything, but has seen the Light with reST :)