I wrote a lengthy novel using a program I wrote.
This produces a suitable LaTeX source I can use to generate a nice-looking PDF.

Markup, beside customary division in Part/Chapter/Scene, is used to put emphasis, to handle direct-speech (which I use a lot, sometimes even nested) and to output certain phrases in "strange fonts".

So far, so good.

Now my problem is I need to convert all this into a format suitable for Kindle as I want to self-publish with Amazon.

I have seen standard tools (i.e.: Kindle Create), but that seems to lack all the kinds of formatting I'm using and its input (if I want to enable reflow) is restricted to Microsoft .docx format, which I don't know how to produce.

OTOH I have control over my program so, given a suitable markup (e.g.: Markdown) I can generate what is needed.

Question is: which "suitable markup" is available for novel rendering?

Ideally it should:

handle standard headings (easy; almost every markup does).
handle TOC and some limited cross-referencing (this is also standard).
handle font change "on the fly" (font face, not just bold/italic).
handle (possibly nested) direct speech, possibly keeping track of speaker.
output a professional-looking ebook for Kindle (mobi, epub or azw3/4).
if possible generate, from the same source, also PDF (not mandatory).

Does such a beast exist?

UPDATE:

judging from comments and the lonely Answer I did not manage to make the message through (or I'm saying something completely foolish, which could well be).

What I really like in LaTeX is it's possible to use things like tqt{Yesterday my boss said: tqt{jump!} and I had to jump.} to define a (nested) direct speech fragment and it will be converted according Your (global) choices.

In my book I use:

«Yesterday my boss said: “jump!” and I had to jump.»

but that could be easily (and globally!) converted to a different style, e.g.:

— Yesterday my boss said: «jump!» and I had to jump.

This (again AFAIK) is possible neither in plain HTML nor with programs normally used to edit books (MSWord, kindle-create, Calibre or Sigil).

Other uses of semantic tagging could include:

differentiating (visually or otherwise) speech from different entities (e.g.: speech from a vampire could be in a different font)
long citations.
nested tales (e.g.: flashbacks).
separators (horizontal line vs. stars vs. graphic image).
add "invisible" metadata (e.g.: time and duration of a scene, to be used to prepare a timeline).
etc.

"Normal" markup languages (e.g.: Markdown) are not really suited for this even if they have a lots of features, mostly useless for novel writing (cross-reference, lists, tables, math, ...).

I am thinking about defining (and implementing) something myself.

Let me know if there is some interest.

Any comment welcome.

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