Scribus
Win/Mac When I first saw this software, I couldn't believe it was open source. It rivals the best of the best commercial software and will create a PDF that is professional commercial grade. Use it to create magazines, illustrated how-to books, travel books, brochures, textbooks, children's books, and the list goes on.
There is a complete online manual with a section for newbies to help you get started. It rivals programs like Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress so be prepared to stretch your brain cells a bit if you have never used a commercial publishing program.
Although there is a fairly steep learning curve, there are lots of tutorials and a large community of users ready to help.
Once you have your masterpiece created in PDF (which plays nicely with iPad), you can convert to whatever file format you need for book sales. See the information on Calibre at the end of this article.
Storybook 2.1.14
Storybook works in both Win and Mac*/Linux. If you need help organizing your characters, timeline, and chapters and want help managing all the ideas that are swirling in your head before you get a chance to jot them down in a draft, then you may want to have a look at this software. The developer refers to it as a 'dynamic mind map'.
Let's suppose you realize that a character needed to reveal a fact much earlier on in the novel. Storybook can take you quickly to the location and the character with the click of a button. Below is a screenshot of what you would see.
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Source: Storybook |
If you are a visual person, seeing the characters and where they are at any given time can make constructing your novel or short story much easier and solve continuity issues before they begin. The trouble with this is that it could be so much fun planning that there is very little writing being done.
All in all it is great software for planners and planning your bestseller is essential. Most commercially successful books are written to formula. You can find all the tutorials you will ever need for using this software right here. It is easy to use and there is no huge learning curve involved. The biggest challenge you will have is to stop playing and get busy writing.
If you are a Mac user, you can get the Linux version but you should be computer savvy. Here's the official statement from Storybook:
*Mac OS X is officially not supported!
- If you have technical knowledge (Unix tools, console / terminal), you may try the version for Linux.
- An other option is using a Virtual Machine such as VirtualBox (Open Source) or VmWare.
What it comes down to for Mac users who are not computer savvy is that they need to buy Windows 7. VirtualBox works only on Leopard and Snow Leopard. However, these versions already come with Boot Camp which will partition your drive so you can use both operating systems. However, VirtualBox uses memory only while open and does not physically partition your drive. Do some research and choose which way you want to go. Personally, getting computer savvy enough to use some Unix tools and the terminal makes more sense to me but if you have OSX 10.6 and above, it will prove daunting unless you are an Apple developer.
Converting PDFs to ePub
Don't you just love generous developers? Most writers are avid readers so I was thrilled to find Calibre (Win/Mac), another open source and very easy to use program for not only converting your writing to formats for eReaders but for organizing and converting files for output to your own device. It organizes your library, adds missing metadata by searching the Internet for you, allows editing of tags, downloads news from RSS feeds, and then converts it all for whatever reader you are using.
Rather than go into a lengthy description of all the incredible things this program does, here is a video from the developer. It's the perfect tour of this elegant little program.
Caution: When converting PDFs, make sure any vector graphics have been changed to image formats like .jpg otherwise the image will be dropped in the conversion.
Calibre in Motion
There are lots more tools out there but really, how many does a writer need? It's time to start creating and publishing!
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This is how I feel when I buy new, expensive software Is your communications bill rivaling your mortgage? Does the cost of some software and services price you right out of the market? Even if you do save...
Sweet! How do you find these things? I feel very selfish because I just keep getting so much from your posts, and have nothing to add :(
ReplyDeleteMaybe the next time. Thank you for sharing your finds.
Thanks, Duchess! Glad you are finding good stuff! I like to share the great tools I find lying around the Internet and I seem to have radar when it comes to free things LOL :)
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