Hello everyone I’m new to Scrivener and have just completed my first science-fiction novel (120 thousand words) Set across 52 chapters each of which has a unique name.
I don’t use either a Mac or a Windows PC as I constantly travel for work and only have my iPhone and iPad on which I do all of my business and have done for the last 10 years.
Just tried to compile an export my book and discovering the software is incredibly limited difficult to put a cover sheet in with a picture almost impossible to format all the text into sensible pages and it’s just flowing chapter and chapter into each other.
Would really like to get everybody’s thoughts on what I might be able to do to improve the system for compiling on my iPad or whether I should just give up and export into a different app.
What value other peoples opinions as I need to submit my novel by December 18 for a literary competition And currently, the formatting is a complete mess, so I have the next four days to fix it.
I am sure there will be advice offered by the numerous experts here. First, though, what format is required for submission on December 18 (which is, sadly, a nearby milestone)?
The iOS version of Scrivener has never been represented as having the full features of the desktop version, especially for compiling deliverables. And, it’s a best practice to compile occasionally and regularly during the writing to help avoid deadline crisis as you may have now.
Meantime, what format do you need? And what are you seeing as “complete mess” that has to be fixed?
The actual text itself isn’t too bad after I finished each chapter I cut and paste it into word and formatted them on an individual basis and then dropped it back in.
The real issue has then been when I compile the entire manuscript which is 52 chapters into a PDF. It’s not separating each chapter they are just running through into each other.
I can make a front cover and a back cover in Photoshop and drop it into the PDF. That’s not a problem but unless anyone has a simple solution I’m gonna have to export the whole thing as word and then put Page breaks in before I make it into a PDF.
I had hoped that as this is a specialist writing app at the very least it would be able to make a book soon as I’ve took the time to create all the chapters.
Also, if anyone has any guidance on font size for an A5 paperback, that would be really helpful as I’ve not made one before, in A4, I’m about 384 pages but at paperback size I’m at almost 900 which is way too many
I don’t mind the deadline crisis. I have cleared my schedule for the next three days and I have no issue surviving on three or four hours of sleep. I actually quite enjoy deadlines. They keep me focused and motivated.
I’ve already Had each chapter proof read along the way as I’ve been sharing it with close family.
So it’s only really about getting it into the right format for a paperback.
Scrivener for iOS is better described as supplement to the full featured Scrivener writing app for macOS and Windows.
Hum. I would have done all the formatting in Scrivener and then finish any formatting in Word or other formatting tool. Not a recommended way to use Scrivener, actually. Even then, minimal formatting in Scrivener is “best practice” and then relying on the compile process in macOS/Windows version of Scrivener to produce a formatted deliverable.
At this juncture, with your deadline, my best advice (may be countered by others so take with a grain of salt) would be to compile the entire book into Word DOCX format, and do your final editing, pagination, and PDF making with Word.
Doing what you want with macOS or Windows Scrivener is possible and how I would do it, but I don’t think you have time to come to grips with Scrivener. You demonstrate you can use Word, so use it at this point to make the final deliverable.
I no longer own a Mac or a Windows PC, so that option isn’t available to me, I’ve ran my entire business from an iPad and via apps for the last five years.
Thanks for the guidance, based on your knowledge. I agree, I couldn’t see any extra options and from what your saying I’ve not missed anything on the app version it’s just not there.
I will export it into Word and do the tidying in there.
For a regular A5 paperback book, would you recommend a particular size font in terms of point size?
See my posts here & here for some background material on learning to build custom iOS Scriv compile formats, using .scomp.
If it were me, I’d spend at maximum a couple of hours reviewing that material to see if .scomp might solve the problems. If it does, great. If it doesn’t, then I’d move on to @rms’ method of exporting to Word and formatting the novel there. (Spending too much time pursuing .scomp could turn out to be an unproductive rabbit hole.)
Thank you this is exactly what I was looking for. Fortunately my son works for the local council in the IT department and is quite good at coding so I’m going to get him to write me the necessary instructions to get what I need.