About a year ago I decided to take the plunge and buy some specialist writing software. My choice came down to a straight race between Scrivener and Storybook.
Storybook won on account of its timeline feature, which proved great for organising research for my historical novel. I set up columns for “Local history”, “Science”, “World events”, and lots more, including the obvious Main Story.
The interface was very good too - all pretty intuitive, and no examples of attempts to be sexy getting in the way of usability () However, it obviously didn’t enjoy a big customer base, and the developers were very much of the Take-the-Money-and-Run school. So it was perhaps inevitable that the whole project folded recently, resulting in my “Pro” version reverting to a hobbled trial status. I couldn’t even export my masses of research. Had to painstakingly copy and paste hundreds of little snippets.
So I made haste to this site and bought Scrivener within 48 hours of starting the free trial - it’s that good! I do miss Storybook’s built-in timeline but I must say that the behind-the-scenes architecture of Scrivener must be superb - everything works so smoothly and quickly.
The lively community of users (which obviously enjoys the enthusiastic support of the developers) is also a Very Good Sign in my book.
Keep up the good work!