Hi. First day with Scrivener. Successfully imported from docx and opened as a .scriv file my novel that I will format for KDP print and ePub.
First question:
I know this is my own fault. My chapter numbers must have been too small. Twenty-point. So Scrivener didn’t detect chapters. Can I accomplish the split now, or should I reimport and start over? In one of the tutorials, I think I saw Heading 1 recommended for chapter headings, but that’s small. I want to match the format of my previous selfpub for which I hired a formatter. Will the Binder recognize 36-point bold as a chapter number?
Second question.
I’m using my professionally formatted previous selfpub as guide, so that pages in the previous and the current book will look similar. The fully justified text lines in that previously published 6 x 9 inch Amazon paperback are 4 and 5/8 inches, so using the Scrivener ruler I’ve set the line length in my .scrive file to 4 and 5/8 inches. I realize I’ll have to adjust all four margins outside of the text to Amazon printing specs, but does 4 and 5/8 on the Scrivener ruler equal 4 and 5/8 text width on the printed page?
Honestly? Why are you using Scrivener? If you already have a complete manuscript and are ready for final formatting, you have already done the parts of the project where Scrivener excels. It is not intended to be a professional layout tool.
With that said …
The Import and Split function is based either on the delimiter you specify, or on named Styles from Word. It has nothing to do with how the text looks visually.
Similarly, the Heading 1 style can look however you want. It’s still Heading 1 and will be treated as such by style-aware commands. (Like Import and Split.)
Yes, a 4 5/8 line should come out as 4 5/8 on the printed page, provided that the Compile command doesn’t change it. However, as I said, Scrivener is really not the right tool if you’re at the part of the process where you care about that.
I agree with the other comments: While you can get nicely formatted compiled manuscripts from Scrivener, this is more desktop publishing territory and I’d recommend looking at the software mentioned above. Scrivener is a brilliant tool for drafting and research, but once a document is “over the publishing wall”, you would probably be better off with software that has a DTP focus.
After getting a great job from Booknook (print, ePub, and finishing my own cover design for $923) on my first selfpub, I’m trying to duplicate that look on my own for this second selfpub. That Booknook novel on Amazon is Swimming by Frank Gaipa and for what little this says about the content, it has shelf appeal. Whenever I place free copies in Little Free Libraries, it reliably disappears before I can check back. I’ve forgotten what first put me onto Scrivener. Everyone points me to InDesign and I could wind up there, but after getting roped into Office 365 a few years ago when I lost my last Office product key, I felt put off by Adobe’s subscription model. I’m already paying for Photoshop that I barely need though I’m accustomed to it and there’s no price break on ‘owning’ two Adobe products.
I’m going to have to upload this Double Time docx again after fixing it so that Scrivener will recognize my chapter breaks and paging. But now that I’ve fiddled with my original upload to Scrivener, I’m looking at a very decent looking WYSIWYG. I’m not sure if the absence of page breaks means I’m accidentally looking at ePub, or maybe I haven’t set a page length, but I should be simple to figure out.
The absence of page breaks means that you are not in Scrivener’s Page View. You can turn it on with the View → Text Editing → Show Page View command.
Which will also allow you to see that you do not have headers or footers in this view, as those are added by the Compile command.
For that reason, among others, Scrivener is NOT a WYSIWYG environment. It also is not, and is not intended to be, a replacement for InDesign, Publisher, or any of their competitors.
