It’s been a very long time since I last went through the tutorial, so unfortunately I don’t remember specific steps or parts. Getting the compile settings just right can take a few goes. While that can initially seem annoying, in the end it’s a godsend. Once you get the output just the way you want it, you can save it and use it again and again and again. That is, all the time spent now with trial and error and tweaking and adjusting is not wasted time, it’s an investment in your future output. Further, because of the underlying principles of Scrivener, it doesn’t matter what the text looks like while you write as it can almost all be modified when you compile. This frees you up from having to worry about the visuals when you write. Because this is completely unlike Word, it can take some getting used to.
Note: I actually think Word is very capable, very powerful, and very useful application. It just sucks for writing long-form documents like novels and theses.
I suspect that contributing to the challenges you are experiencing is that you have a completed work and are now trying to bring it into Scrivener for editing. It is generally at this point that people consider whether to stay in Scrivener or finish off in another application (for example, I finished my thesis in Word). The choice will depend a little on what formats you need to send the finished work to, how complex the document is, and how much more editing and revising is required.
Thank you both again for the quick response and advice. That’s great. I really appreciate it.
I will work on changing the page setup and paper size in Compile on Friday as well as try to create the PDF the way Briar suggests.
Interesting Nom, that you finished your thesis in Word after working on it in Scrivener. For me it’s just the opposite. I really like the look of the file in Word but I suppose that in order to create ePub files, I would need Scrivener. I heard it should be easier to use than Sigil. I will finish the other steps of the tutorial on Friday and see what the end result looks like. If I work on Scrivener Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I hope I can say on Monday that both novels are ready to be published. I’m an optimist!
And like you say Nom, the idea of saving the output so I can use it again and again would be worth all the hours I’m investing in it now.
I’ll keep you posted.
Word is really good at some things*. I mean really good. It does styles well. It handles tables better than anything else I’ve used. It’s ubiquitous. So, when I need to use styles or tables, I will write (or at least finish) a project in Word. When I need to share a document with others, I compile to a Word document. So when I was writing my thesis, I would regularly compile individual chapters to send to my supervisors. Because I had some complex tables, and my university had some specific formatting requirements (to do with page numbering of different sections) and I used citation software that didn’t work with Scrivener at the time, I compiled to a Word document and finished editing and page layout in Word.
There’s the nub of the problem: Word is (for most people) a page layout program, Scrivener is a writing program. This really gets to the heart of the beauty of Scrivener because it doesn’t matter what your words look like. Whatever they look like when you write, you can change when you compile. So, for example, if you like writing in purple Comic Sans at 26 point go for it; you can still compile to black 12 point Times New Roman. And this is why Scrivener is better for ePub than Word. Word is (for most people) stuck in the page metaphor: you get everything to look good on the page, to flow from page to page, to avoid orphan sentence fragments hanging on a page, and so on. We get fixated on the page. But the page is meaningless with ePub. As best as I can tell you have almost no control over how a book “looks” with ePub because the reader controls the visual layout. As an author, you only control the words and that is Scrivener’s specialty!
I like the optimism.
Keep us posted…
[size=85]*Despite this, I still don’t like Word and use it less and less. For page layout, Pages is superior. For long documents, Scrivener is vastly superior. So although Word is great for tables and ubiquity, I doubt I will install it on my next new computer. I’m still running Office 2008 because I just cannot justify the cost of upgrading to a more recent version, especially when I compare it Pages (free) and Scrivener (awesome). [/size]
I’m so sorry for not reverting before. As you said Nom, you liked my optimism when I said I thought I could solve it that weekend. I did the tutorial that weekend but kept getting stuck where I wasn’t able to get the results I was supposed to get according to the tutorial and I got discouraged. Fortunately, I found a great youtube film from Julie Kenner that helped me a lot. Last night I finally managed to create a Mobi file that I feel I could live with. If felt like a real victory!
I wasn’t able to figure out how to make my ebook look as good as my publisher because she uses Haunting Attraction and the Midnight Moon font for titles and the first letter of each chapter. I have installed it on my computer and it is in Scrivener since I see these fonts in my Scrivener file, but when I press Compile to create the mobi file the font is very different in Kindle. At least, I managed to get the file in such a way that all the letters showed on the same page and the words weren’t split over two lines. I changed the Scrivener file at least forty times after I had pressed ‘Compile’ in Scrivener to create the Mobi file. The final version looks a bit weird in the Scrivener file itself (really tiny letters), but that was the only way it worked in Kindle. If you have any tips on how I could export the font in Scrivener into the Mobi file, I would love to hear it. If not, I can live with the way it looks now. The main thing is that people will be able to read it.
One of the steps in the tutorial that I never got to work was about creating templates. In step 22, I had thought I had created a template and in 4, you need to go to File> New from Template. “You will find the template you just created.” But the New from the template folder didn’t exist. When I tried to save the file as a template again, I got the message “template already exists” but I couldn’t find it. It would be nice if I could use my current file as a template that I could then use for my other book. Could you please let me know how I could do that?
Thanks again for all your help. I’m happy that I’m so close to finalizing the electronic version of my book and wouldn’t have been able to do that without your assistance.
Note that Scrivener cannot embed fonts in ebooks, due to licensing issues. So even if you use the Midnight Moon font in the Scrivener document, it won’t be available in the ebook.
As for templates, are you trying to create a document template, or a project template? The two use different procedures.
Thank you very much for the quick response and the information. I’m glad to know it’s not my fault the font in the mobi file looks so different from the Scrivener file even if I think it’s a pity I can’t use the same font my publisher used for the previous mobi version. I suppose that readers won’t notice that kind of details anyway. The most important thing is that it’s legible now.
Thanks also for mentioning that there is a difference between a document template and a project template. I hadn’t realized that. I suppose I need a project template since every new book would be a new project. I have another book ready in Word that I need to create the mobi version for. If possible I’d like to use the layout of the first book I put in Scrivener as the template for this other book. If that’s not possible I would just have to create the file from scratch again. It shouldn’t take me as long as it did to create the first book but it would be nice if I could use some kind of template so I know both books will look the same.
The File -> Save As Template command saves the current project as a template, which will then appear in the New Project template chooser window.
Note that the template will include everything that’s in the original project: all the text, all the research, everything. So you’ll probably want to start with a backup copy of the original project, then strip out everything that you don’t want in the template.
You might also want to save your Compile settings, which you can do from the Format As: menu in the Compile window. Scroll down to the Manage Compile Presets option.
Thanks Katherine for the quick response and the information. I will try to create the template this weekend and do the steps you mentioned. I will let you know if it works.
Thanks again. I found the template this time.
About Manage Compile Format Presets, is just clicking on ‘OK’ enough? It’s what I did but when I pasted some text from book 1, the letter type changed completely. Should I have clicked on Import or Export for the letter type not to change?
When you say the type changed completely, do you mean that the pasted text did not match the text in the template? Or do you mean that it did, and didn’t match the original? More important, what do you want to happen?
Note that the Compile presets will have no effect whatsoever on the text actually contained in the project. The whole point of the Compile function is that you can use completely different formatting as you write from what you will ultimately want in the output document.
Personally, I find that Importing into a new project is less error-prone than cutting and pasting. On the other hand, since I do almost all my writing in Scrivener, I have very little need for either function these days.
Thanks Katherine, for the quick response and the explanation on Compile presets. I appreciate it. It sounds like what I want isn’t possible. What I meant was that the pasted text did not match the text in the template. It didn’t match the original. I would like both books in Scrivener to have the exact same look - if that’s possible.
I spent about 140 hours on getting the first book to look right (or so I thought). Unfortunately, I discovered last night that what looks good on my Kindle on Mac doesn’t automatically mean it will look good on my Kindle device so I will need to spend a couple more hours on getting the page dividers to look the same and have the title page on just one page instead of two. I thought I was done there. But I expect that a few more hours playing around with the template and pressing ‘Compile’ a couple of times will solve the problem. Then, when I’m done, I hope to be able to paste the text from the other book into the template and that I won’t need to spend so many hours on making both books look the same. Importing my book into a new project and starting from scratch will cost me a lot more hours and I hope I can avoid that by using a template. Is it possible?
If you are pasting text in, use “Paste and Match Style” — I have reset my keyboard shortcuts so that Cmd-V gives me that, and I can’t remember what the original shortcut was. As for any text that you’ve pasted in which looks different, select all those bits and use Documents > Convert > Convert Formatting to Default Text Style.
As Mr. X said, the Paste and Match Style command is the one you want.
However, it shouldn’t matter. You can use a Compile preset to normalize the output format regardless of what the text in the project looks like.
On templates, are you using a project template, or a document template? (See our discussion of this point upthread.) If you are using a project template, you can create a brand new project from it and import in your existing book. Then use the Convert to Default Text Style command to reformat the new text as needed.
With ebooks, however, keep in mind that the user can override most of your formatting choices by defining the font and type size they prefer. Spending hours of effort to get the kind of layout perfection you might see in a printed book may not be the best use of your time. Nor is Scrivener the best tool if that’s what you’re trying to achieve.
Thank you both very much for the quick explanation. It worked! Both books look the same and I managed to do that in 6 hours today so that’s a lot quicker than before! I’m very grateful.
Unfortunately, I can’t celebrate yet… They look a little bit too much alike. There are two things in the second book from the first book that I can’t seem to get rid of: when I press Compile and open the file in Kindle, it’s in the Kindle library with the cover of the first book I created in Scrivener and the first title even though the file in Scrivener has the right title and right cover. When I open the Kindle file, I do see the right cover inside the e-book, so I don’t know why it shows the other cover on the library page?
Could you please help me get the right title and right cover to show up in the Kindle library?
I did the tutorial that weekend but kept getting stuck where I wasn’t able to get the results I was supposed to get according to the tutorial and I got discouraged. Fortunately, I found a great youtube film from Julie Kenner that helped me a lot. Last night I finally managed to create a Mobi file that I feel I could live with. If felt like a real victory!
I thought I was done there. But I expect that a few more hours playing around with the template and pressing ‘Compile’ a couple of times will solve the problem. Then, when I’m done, I hope to be able to paste the text from the other book into the template and that I won’t need to spend so many hours on making both books look the same. Importing my book into a new project and starting from scratch will cost me a lot more hours and I hope I can avoid that by using a template. Is it possible?