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Julie Christensen
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« on: December 14, 2011, 08:25:59 PM » |
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My experience publishing ebooks has inspired my mom to write a book! She is just about finished! For help with her final edits, she bought the Scrivener app, and she loves it. Meanwhile, I can't get a handle on what exactly it does. The way she describes it, she will be able to convert her books to ebook book formats, as well as paperback.
I was planning on helping her convert her books to upload online, and to turn into paperback via CreateSpace. Has anyone tried this on Scrivener? If so, what was your experience? Did it really convert your book seamlessly to mobi and the other ebook formats? Were you able to also use it for CreateSpace? I hate to be a Negative Nellie, but this seems too good to be true.
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| Murder Beyond Words - When a literary agent is murdered in Brooklyn, her neighbor, an aspiring writer, tries to solve the crime. | | The Truth About Dating - When a funny, but introverted woman embarks on a quest to find a man, humorous and heartbreaking events redirect her to a different path in life. | | Searching for Meredith Love - A woman living a quietly miserable existence suddenly learns what happiness could be, but a secret |
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Edward M. Grant
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« Reply #1 on: December 14, 2011, 09:20:04 PM » |
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It's basically a word processor designed for writing stories, novels and screenplays. So it can output direct to .mobi format for Kindle, but I haven't done much with that yet... it seems to work but I'm seeing chapter headings in places where I don't expect them.
All in all I'd say it's well worth the $20 I paid for it.
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WilliamEsmont
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« Reply #2 on: December 14, 2011, 09:26:26 PM » |
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I haven't tried it with the final version of Scrivener (Windows), but I did use the export functionality of a late beta to generate the .mobi files I sent to my beta readers a few months ago. It was a disaster - all kinds of strange line breaks, etc. I'd be curious to know if that was fixed.
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Connie Brentford
Status: Dr. Seuss
Offline
Gender: 
Florida and other places on the planet
Posts: 29
Some labels: Writer, reader, traveler, wife, mom
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« Reply #3 on: December 14, 2011, 09:42:37 PM » |
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I have the Mac version of Scrivener which I have used for 2+ years and I had no trouble converting my books to mobi or epub. I love it!  I also used David Hewson's Scrivener guide for help. 
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Cheryl M.
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« Reply #4 on: December 14, 2011, 10:08:28 PM » |
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I absolutely adore Scrivener! I've not tried to export to .mobi, though so I can't say much about it. I hear it does a great job. If there's one thing I've learned, if it exports funky, it's likely more user error than product error. I would export to .doc and get totally whacked out stuff happening only to find out a year later that that's exactly what my export settings were set to do.
I just bought Storyist because they have an iPad app and I just got one of those a few days ago so I'm trying it out. It's very similar to Scrivener but I think it's even more geared toward the plotter than Scrivener.
The main feature that any of these have is the ability to simply move things around with a drag. There are other nice features but honestly, as a writer, it's nice to just be able to disable a chapter from your draft, move it somewhere else, cut a scene, etc. It makes navigating what you've done a gazillion times easier.
Everyone I know that's exported to .mobi has done very well. It exports to doc, fdx, pdf, html, mobi and epub. So I don't really see anything you couldn't use for whatever purpose you need. This is becoming a more common feature in writing software. But if all you really want is plain old conversion to .mobi or epub, then you could just use Calibre for that and it's free.
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~Cheryl~
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NRWick
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« Reply #5 on: December 14, 2011, 10:18:22 PM » |
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Just wanted to pop in here and say that Scrivener is amazing. I use it for every writing project and YES! It does do great work converting to ebook files. It took me a while to figure out how to get it to work the way I wanted, but now that I have, it's so freaking easy! I used to do the whole "convert to epub or html, fiddle with it in Sigil or Dreamweaver, reconvert to mobi, check it in previewers, etc." but now I just put in the Scrivener compile settings, click compile, and I'm done. It's fantastic!
I had the hardest time figuring out how to get it to compile exactly the way I wanted because the guides were not transparent enough for me. But now that I have figured it out, it's epic. If anyone is having trouble and can't find a proper tutorial, please feel free to message me.
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Land of No Mortals, Now Available! 
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Free books for Kindle
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« Reply #6 on: December 14, 2011, 11:08:41 PM » |
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I'm a recent convert to Scrivener. I haven't figured everything out yet but it's excellent at taking lots of disparate bits of info or ideas and allowing you to try out and build a framework for your book. I haven't quite managed to get it to produce either HTML or mobis which I'm completely happy with so any thoughts on how to tweak it to that would be great appreciated.
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WilliamKing.me
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« Reply #7 on: December 15, 2011, 12:44:21 AM » |
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I've compiled books to epub and mobi and it works just fine on the Mac. Can't say as I've tried it on the Windows version yet. In any case, it is simply the best program for writing a novel on I have ever used. Wrote my last six books on it. The development team are an absolute pleasure to deal with too. I had a problem with the license code for my Windows version. I wrote to them about at 2 in the morning UK time (it's their time zone and mine) and went to bed. There was a solution waiting when I got up in the morning.
All the best,
Bill
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