03 July 2011 In case you haven't heard, there's a pretty awesome tool for authors and knowledge workers called Scrivener. I'm a tool junky, and after having tinkered with my own command-line and other hodge-podge solutions, I finally settled on using this. Not that Scrivener is without its warts, but that it has significantly fewer warts than anything I've done. However, it's time for Scrivener to evolve.

What do I mean by that? We are on Scrivener 2.0, you say. Certainly. But, I think it's being held back by one of its founding principles. Scrivener is primarily meant as a drafting tool. Authors are expected to do the fine tuning outside the tool; either by using another commercial offering, or by rendering as Markdown, which is later compiled into LaTeX then to PDF for print purposes. The default PDF rendition is a submission-worthy format. You can print that sucker off and send it off to agents or willing publishers. This approach ignores two emerging trends. First, self-publishing is steadily ascending. Second, electronic books.

Emerging Trends Agitate for a Single Provider

Self-publishing was once derided as the last choice of a desperate author. He could not get published anywhere else, so he goes to a vanity press and runs off a couple thousand copies. Major publishing houses continue to make that claim and assumption. However, publishers can't give decent treatment to the rash of novels coming out. They will tell you the slush pile is being ignored. B-Listers have been passed by as the publishing companies try to remain profitable.

Self-publishers now have the power of Print On Demand (POD). This avoids forcing the author to print more than a few proofs. If his masterpiece sells no more than a few sympathy copies, then he's lost his time and perhaps a few hundred dollars for cover art and ISBN. If it does sell, then he has a ready publisher. Now that Amazon owns CreateSpace, you not only have a ready POD publisher, but you are also hooked into a distribution powerhouse. I don't have to remind you that Amazon has brought brick and mortar bookstores to their knees over the past decade. Borders can't find a buyer and Barnes & Nobles is banking on the Nook. Even if you prefer Lulu, which was my previous favorite, you still have the chance to get your book out there.

Electronic books have been this red-headed stepchild of the publishing industry. A dream for many that in the past two years have ascended to be a competitive option. Despite the New York Times refusing to list self-publishers and electronic books, we are now finding author/publishers of electronic books selling 1,000s and 10,000s of books per month (5000 per week is enough to be a NYT Bestseller, or 22,000+ per month).

An author can go from draft to edit to publish without ever printing a page of paper…or without ever engaging an agent or traditional publisher. To do this effectively, the author needs one tool it can rely on that can take them from concept to publication intentionally.

Knowledge Workers Need a Single Provider

Knowledge workers, to me, are those who deal exclusively in the realm of knowledge. Masters students and doctoral candidates are examples I read about on the Scrivener Forums routinely. There are also instances of lawyers who use Scrivener—knowledge workers. When a lawyer produces a brief, or a student writes a paper, there are exacting formats with which the knowledge worker must comply.

Scrivener is Positioned to Become that Single Provider

This is where I think Scrivener could be that single provider. I don't think Scrivener is that tool yet. First, the initial design decision was that Scrivener would be a tool for drafting. It's a document project management tool; and an awesome one. But, it was never intended to produce a finished copy.

Yes, Scrivener produces Kindle format. That allows an author to go from concept to e-publication. Yes, Scrivener produces PDFs that can be formatted to 6"x9" for CreateSpace or other POD publishers. So, if you just consider these facts then Scrivener is that Single Provider.

However, Scrivener lacks one key ingredient to be that provider. It relies on the RTF format. It allows the author to change formatting in mid-page in a way that goes against template. Actually, its problem is that it engages the author in formatting decisions—much like MS Word and less like LaTeX.

Yes, I could write in Markdown; but at the expense of some of the other powers of RTF. What Scrivener needs is a guarantee that the document-wide settings will be enforced at compile. It also needs a print template that creates a finished novel in the appropriate format for the author's nationality.