I know that there are many different opinions when it comes to these two programs. I am also aware that many people don’t even know about Scrivener. So, I thought I’d briefly go through the two different programs to give you a little bit of information on both.

Scrivener

It was created by Literature and Latte with all different types of writers in mind. As you can see by the screenshot below, it has a lot of bell’s and whistles to it. Scrivener is quite difficult to master and has taken some writers months to get the process right, but when you do get the hang of it, it is a brilliant application.

You can create all different types of manuscripts and it gives you helpful hints and information on how to do each of them. It also gives you templates for certain things, like your bio or dedication. Once you have finished with your manuscript and you’d like to export it, it also gives you all the different version options that it can export to, like ePub, PDF, etc.

Another nice thing about Scrivener is that you can save all extra information about your book in your manuscript pack. That means that all your research, photo’s and character sketches can be added to your manuscript pack and kept in one place. This makes your work more organized.

I would say that the only downfall of this software is that it almost takes a degree to work with it and you will have to spend a lot of your time training yourself on using the software.

The cost for this software is about R770, depending on the exchange rate (for South Africans). It is also a once-off payment.

InDesign

This software is part of the Adobe Creative Cloud and can be used for many different things. As a writer, it’s a good way to get your book in the format that is needed. When you open a new document in InDesign, it will look like the below screen. You will then still need to create your master pages that will contain your page numbers and running headers on either side.

You can then start adding your content and set the master pages onto the different pages that you have. This means that you don’t need to keep typing out the same format onto the different pages, it can be set for them.

I believe that InDesign is easier to use and doesn’t require a lot of training to use it. You can also generally get your manuscript set up quite easily. The only problem is that you can’t upload all your research to the software as it doesn’t work that way.

The cost of this software is about R304.30 per month for a single app package choice, depending on the exchange rate (for South Africans). This also gets deducted as a lump sum for a 12-month period which is R3651.60.

Which software do you use to get your book print ready?

That’s it from me for now…

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