Authors!
We have a nice thread where authors can plug their books.
and some of those look nice.

But I would like to ask,

What software do YOU use to carry out the steps to get the book from your head, to the finished product ?

Any software you find indispensable?
Any software you suggest we avoid?

Chime in, please.
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To be honest, I've kept it simple. I just use MSWord to write the manuscript. It's kind of universal which means editors, publishers, agents, magazines can take it without any compatibility issues. Recently, I was sent a screenplay, but I couldn't read it because I didn't have the software and converting it to a pdf file became an exercise in alchemy.

Does that answer your question or you want to extend it to converting the manuscript to ebook format.

Originally Posted by Simon Wood

. . . Does that answer your question or you want to extend it to converting the manuscript to ebook format.

Yes, actually.

I am interested in what steps or tools people are using to actually make it ready for the user to download.


Thanks for responding....
Was almost thinking no authors were seeing the post.


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Steve, I so your post was all alone and I thought I'd jump in. I would have earlier but I've been out of town for over a week.

To answer your question. Again, I use word to produce the manuscript, but I use Namo Webeditor to edit the html coding that can screw up conversion to Kindle or iPad, etc.

That said, I publish the ebook versions of my books through smashwords.com and their little elves do the converting to most formats and so far the translation has gone through without a hitch.

When it comes to cover images, I have a base image software that can make most things look professional. In a couple of cases I'm using the original artwork that was produced for the original book.

I use Office/Word to write. I find that even editing and re-editing (sometimes dozens of times) by myself and others, typoes still manage to elude me. I find that having it read aloud to me is invaluable in fixing this. So, I use Text2Go for this purpose. I also use Bookcover Pro to create the covers for my books.

i used to use MS Word. Recently i started using Liquid Story Binder - it's fantastic; I very much recommend it.

glenn g. thater
author of harbinger of doom

I use Word to write it, but I use OpenOffice and Adobe Indesign to prep it for publishing. Word leaves to much of it's own code in the document.

Covers are done in Photoshop.

Believe it or not, I use a text editor - Textpad for much of the narrative. Then I use Word Master documents for the manuscript. I can still write the chapters easily in single-space or whatever I want, then use Word Master doc format for the manuscript formatting. I like being able to use different Master docs for different formats. I got very lucky when I started looking for publishing software. Instead, I found Smashword.com. They publish and distribute books to multiple platforms.