Scrivener Output to EPub and Mobi

Happy Friday, good people of the blogosphere! Well, I'm back (as promised) with a little more information about Scrivener and one of the cool features that program has. I've run across a number of authors lately that didn't know you could upload your book to KDP and then download the .mobi version from the book publishing page. This really neat tool in Scrivener allows you to skip that step and publish your book right out to a .mobi or .epub file. Let me be perfectly frank with you all: I've never tried it. Why? Well, because the learning curve in that program is one I haven't quite hit yet.

But that's not going to stop me from sharing this awesome little video with you all:

Exporting your e-book with Scrivener

In design school, we were taught there's a specific program a designer uses for creation of different things. For example: Photoshop is an image editing program, Illustrator is for logo creation, and InDesign is for layouts of printed material.

Perhaps it's the same for writers. When you have a tool that's as powerful as Scrivener, it's something you should learn, right?

From the comments on my last post Word Processors for Writers - MS Word vs Scrivener, I gather many people gave up on the complexity of Scrivener because of the learning curve. I'm one of those writers. It's not because I don't see the potential of the program; but because I can't seem to carve out the time in my day to sit down and learn how to use it.

Out of curiosity, I popped over to the blog on literatureandlatte.com to find out what the folks behind the scenes are doing to propel the software forward. I found this post, published in April of 2013. It seems that's the last post published on their blog and promises an iOS version of Scrivener soon.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I love streamlined. If I can open a program on my computer, work on a document, save it, close it, head to the DMV to sit for three hours with my iPad in tow, open the same program, and continue my work with no loss of data (because it's in the cloud) or time, that seems like a no-brainer to me. Productivity is everything in this business.

Is the functionality of a program important to me? Yes. So is convenience.

Since I cut my teeth on MS Word, like many of you, I tend to reach for what I know to accomplish my goals. Is that the right thing to do? Hmmm...

I'm not telling you I hate Scrivener or for you not to use it. Quite the opposite, actually. If you know how to use that program and love it, keep going. It's a powerful writer tool.

But, if you use MS Word, don't feel like you're less than those who've taken the plunge. Some of the comments on that other post give you ways to work within MS Word just like you do with Scrivener.

Just like those who love Scrivener for writing because they know it so well, I have a deep love for InDesign for book layout. Can you do most of the same things in Word? Yup. With every program, there's good and bad, like yin and yang.

What's the answer? Only you can decide what's best for your process. Either or, it's always about producing a great book. That's the bottom line.

I hope you enjoyed this post and I hope I answered the question my commenter had a while ago about outputting to .epub and .mobi from Scrivener.

Did you know the program could do that?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo