The idea for Her Violet Empire came to me in October of 2013. I ran down the hall from our bedroom to my “office” so I could write it down before I forgot. I’m a computer guy, so no way am I going to actually write it down. I struggle with ADHD-Inattentive and paper gets lost all the time. I am also Open Source to my core, so the first thing I reached for was LibreOffice Writer.
As much as I love Libre, it does lag behind its more popular commercial cousin in features. It became limiting, so I broke down and bought Word. I’ve been using the “big guy” for a couple years and it’s an effective tool for bashing out words to the screen. It really shines with grammar and punctuation and made my editor’s job a lot easier. Where it started to fall apart, however, is formatting for a book. Changing margins would cause a reshuffle all the way down the screen; section breaks wouldn’t go where I wanted them without adding a full blank page; page numbers, oh forget it. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
Now that HVE is almost fully edited and text complete, I figured there has to be a better way to create the needed artifacts for publication. Naturally, there are…hundreds. I looked over some blogs and reviews and, as with anything on the Intarwebs, everyone has an opinion. I decided I would pick a couple and try them, so here’s what I found.
Let me be 100% crystal clear: None of these reviews are paid or sponsored and the opinions contained herein are my own.
Reedsy
Reedsy is a web-based book editor that is free to use. It has an impeccably clean interface and a lot of features to like about it. I’m not adding new content presently, so I didn’t evaluate some of the focus tools. When I start working on the next parts of my respective series, I may give this another try. Daily word targets, collaborative editing, and the front matter editor are really slick features that can help people get started easily. If your text is a little more free-form, Reedsy is a bargain at twice the price!
Where it started to fall apart for me was in the left navigation. My book has Prologue and Epilogue text that I did not want to be assigned chapter numbers. You can put a Preface in the front matter, but it’s likely paginated separately and that doesn’t work for me. In short, the pieces and parts of a book in Reedsy are a little more opinionated and rigid than I would have liked. You cannot even rename the sections (if anyone knows differently, let me know.)
I appreciate what Reedsy is going for here. Though it won’t work for HVE, I may return to it down the road.
Scrivener
Scrivener is a BEAST. It comes with a $50 USD price tag, but offers a 30-day free trial which I’m still using. The feature set is massive and, although the interface is a bit crufty, it’s not that hard to find things. What I liked most here was that text is just text. Margins, paragraph formatting, and section breaks are no longer an issue. Also, the binder feature allows you to arrange your narrative hierarchically. Each part, chapter, and scene can be their own document and it’ll stitch it all together for you later. Super cool! It also gives you ways to build character profiles, compile research materials, and add front and back matter to your heart’s content.
On the con side, let me stress again that Scrivener is a BEAST. For someone just getting started, it’s daunting as hell. I’ve been in IT for 23 years now and through every type of software you can imagine. Scrivener has the smell of a tool that is trying to be everything to everyone. A noble goal to be sure, but it’s possible to make something too flexible. There’s a lot of trial-and-error that goes into making something work, particularly in the Compile phase.
My take is that, with time, I can get a lot of use out of Scrivener and I may pony up the money for it when my trial runs out.
Campfire
Campfire was recommended to me by a friend who’s working on some epic fantasy. I’ll be honest that I did not, in fact, run a proof-of-concept on this guy, but I thought it merited some words. My series is rooted in the real world, so worldbuilding was not a necessary part of my process. For things like The Expanse, or anything sufficiently grand in scale, I could see this tool being an absolute lifesaver. The timeline feature here could have saved me a lot of time with HVE. Not to belabor the point, but I never thought I’d publish, so it never occurred to me to use any purpose-built tools before now.
The biggest downside I see to Campfire is in the cost. It’s very a la carte, but the numbers can grow quite large. You can also purchase a lifetime license, but that can soar into multiple hundreds of dollars depending on the modules you choose. As I mentioned, it does seem like somewhat of a niche tool, but if that fits your plans, this might save you from printing out some character sheets!
Conclusion
As it stands, I’ll probably be using Scrivener for the time being. That said, there are always newer, shinier tools out there and I can’t say this is the only way I’ll do things forever. If you have a tool that you love and want to sing its praises, leave me a comment!