So I bought Scrivener because it’s supposed to be the best book writing software out there, but I’m struggling to figure out how to format my work. Basically I want a main text in the middle, one sidebar on the sides of each page, and a footnotes bar in the bottom of each page. How do I set this up? Please help.
Scrivener is good for writing your book, but it’s not designed to handle the detailed page layout of your book. If you already have a nearly complete manuscript, you have already done the steps where Scrivener excels.
If you haven’t already, I’d recommend taking a look at our Interactive Tutorial, available from the Help menu. It’s a good overview of Scrivener’s fundamental operations.
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What do you recommend for me, given what I need for my layout?
Like let’s say I write out all the book in Scrivener, use comments for sidebar, and then footnotes for footnote bar. After that, where would I move the project to have a layout like I want before publishing?
Adobe InDesign, Affinity publisher, Quarck Xpress (?).
Sigil, Calibre, Vellum for e-books.
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Does Quark Xpress still exist in any meaningful way? I ask out of genuine interest. 30 years ago I was on the Pagemaker side of the DTP Wars 
Today its Affinity Publisher for me…
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No, you might still use it if you’ve got it. InDesign is the industry standard nowadays.
Yes, it does… if you want to spend ca £250 per year subscription or ca £700 to buy a licence.
I used it about 30 years ago and got on well. I’ve also used Pagemaker and In Design. But QE and ID are way beyond my means but I currently have Affinity Publisher. I haven’t used any of them professionally.
Mark
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Thank you. It looks like Affinity Publisher v2 will be the way to go for me. It can do physical copies and e-books, correct?
Thanks Owen. I’m thinking Affinity Publisher v2 as well.
Yea, I’ll probably go Affinity Publisher v2 because I hate subscription models.