I'm going to write a book related to IT and while it will be more narrative than code/screen shots I'd like to use a very professional word template. Does anyone have a recommendation? The templates from Microsoft leave much to be desired. I'm willing to buy commerical if one is available. The APRESS/Wrox format is what I'm anxious to go for quality-wise and not the gimmicky styles of template websites.
Regards.
O'Reilly make their Word template available to interested authors. See chapter 2 of "So You Want To Write A Book" (scroll down to "Approved formats").
This is probably not what you want to hear, but I'd rather suggest investing the time and use LaTeX, ConTeXt or something similar. I've also seen books that were typeset using XSL:FO, although that's stretching it a bit. IMHO Word is nice for writing letters, but I've had so much trouble with a single 300-page Word document (starting with weird picture placement errors and ending in whole documents being re-layouted when I changed the printer driver) that I wouldn't recommend it.
Each publisher will have their own template. You should use the one from your publisher. If you don't have a publisher yet, then you're jumping the gun a bit (unless you're planning on self publishing which is becoming an option, although it lacks the credibility).
I've worked with O'Reilly, Wiley, and Macromedia Press and they all used MS Word on the books I was involved with, and each had their own template.
I'd re-echo U62's point about O'Reilly's word template to use - pretty much all the publishing companies use something similar and you'll be using pretty much the same style names - or at least using a 1:1 mapping with them.
Don't forget also that Word can now also use XML schema as mappings for a template as well, so if you want to use Docbook - something I'd recommend thinking about if you want to keep your options open once you've written your book - you can download the schema for that and use it.
If I were you, I would definitely look beyond IT related book templates. Correct me if I'm wrong, but everything I can see that makes a book template IT specific is the possibility to quote code, one variation being in block form, and the other within a text like what we have in markdown: $variablename that is a styling question that could easily be added afterwards.
Finding high-quality templates seems really hard. Maybe the best way is to find a clean basic Word template, and customize it yourself to the desired look and feel. It's not that hard, it's just many small details, and there's nothing wrong with copying some of those details from one's favourite book. (If it gets published by a publishing house some day, it will get scrutinized by a merciless layouter anyway, imported into whatever they use for layouting, and streamlined with their design guidelines. For the moment, it needs to look clean and the way you like it.)
One of the most important characteristics of a book is certainly the font used. Fonts are easy to identify using Identifont, and often affordable to purchase.
Some Googling turns up this range of minimalistic book templates. While it's not Addison-Wesley or Random House, but a self-publishing enterprise, the template looks clean and provides the basics. Maybe it - or something like it - is a start.
Ummm, 99% writing the book, 1% worring about layout
I have spoken with some published authors in the past and they all used Microsoft Word
Use a word processor and ONLY format using style sheets
Link to images, DO NOT embed them. The reason word processors crash with large documents is mainly due to running out of memory with hundred of embedded images
Decent word processors like Microsoft Word allow you to work on smaller documents (e.g chapters) which is usually faster. You can then link them together to make the final index, TOC, and then print entire document to PDF
When you are ready to publish, get a professional book layout artist to help lay it out properly
Most POD (*print on demand) accept either PDF or Microsoft Word