My Personal Debate
Scrivener > Atticus > Vellum
You know how you get into these internal slugfests with yourself? When you realized you’ve made a mistake but instead of acknowledging it and moving on, you doggedly hold on to the “I’m not backing down” bullshit? Well, that’s where I’ve been with the popular writing software, Scrivener… for the past fourteen friggin’ years. This article is about my journey with the software that literally changed the way I write, but disappointed me to where I took a deep look at why I have been so hesitant to move on. Let me start with a little background.
In the Beginning:
When I first started writing, like so many others, I fired up a copy of Microsoft Word and began punching keys. It worked well for a while. Being a pantser, however, I take a lot of notes while I write. It’s my way of keeping up with details such as character bios, location demographics, timelines, etc.. I quickly found that Word, while an excellent piece of software, didn’t allow me to keep notes very well. What I ended up with was a desktop full of randomly printed research pages, yellow sticky notes, and various other crap. It was not functional.
I began searching for an alternative to Word. I had also begun using a Mac, so there was that wrinkle. During my search, I found several apps related to writing, but none that did what I needed efficiently. So I started asking other writers what they used and a clear winner quickly emerged. Scrivener by Literature and Latte was the hands-down favorite of literally everyone I talked to. I had little money back then, and the price was a bit outside my budget, but I purchased it anyway and the functionality blew me away. It did everything I needed and a lot more.
Writers warned me the learning phase could be overwhelming, and they were right. So much so that I abandoned it and went back to Word (for Mac) after just a few days. A year later, still frustrated with chaos on my desk, I tried Scrivener again. I gave myself a week to do nothing but engage in learning this damn software. After a few days, I had the basics down, imported my Word manuscript and never looked back. It still amazes me that after fourteen years I still find things this program can do that I never knew about.
Where Things Began to Unravel:
1. Back ups - Scrivener works just fine in all its awesomeness until you need to work across multiple machines, say, your desktop and a laptop. If you forget to ensure the backup folder definitions are the same on both machines, you’ll end up with your backed up data files in multiple locations. It’s fixable, but it can be a pain when you return to your main machine and freak out when all the changes you made while away are not there, and worse, no backups to be found.
The first time it happened to me, I was ready to set something on fire until I remembered my laptop. When I checked the backup folder location in the apps config, I immediately saw my problem. I hadn’t set it to the same location as my desktop. Disaster averted, and I was happy again.
2. Compiling - in order to generate a manuscript to send to your publisher, your project has to be compiled. It’s a very clunky process with options galore. Page layout was a major concern. I found the options very limited and overly confusing. I made a tweak to a section and obviously did something wrong because apparently it pissed off the program, and the output was horrible. So I never tried again and decided I’d just use the first default setup that looked decent, which was a basic, straight format—No drop caps. No ornamental section breaks. No enhancements whatsoever.
Bottom Line:
Scrivener is a wonderful, powerful program to write with and served me well for years. Having the use of a dedicated pane beside my writing window for note taking made the purchase worth it. I can link to all sorts of data from within the app. Things like pictures, links to websites, Wikipedia sites. Scrivener accommodates nearly any sort of data you want to link to. With built-in character sheets, location sheets, research folder, etc. all available within the writing environment was like a godsend. At the end of the day, though, two things killed it for me: multi-machine backups, and page layout. Both required steps that I just kept screwing up. Enter Atticus.
Atticus: by the folks over at kindlepreneur
I found Atticus purely by accident. I recently finished a first draft on a new book and I wanted to dabble a bit more into page layout options. One more stab at Scrivener’s implementation dictated I look elsewhere. I found Atticus while surveying the net for an alternative. At this point, I was pretty fed up with Scrivener and, after years of use, was ready to move to a new platform. Atticus, though still in development, looked interesting.
The Kindlepreneur site is a treasure trove of information to help self-publishing authors of all skill levels.
Atticus offered everything I was looking for in terms of page layout design. It includes several eye-catching designs, including the use of ornamentals, drop caps, etc.. One drawback right out the gate, though, was the pricing model. There is no trial version. You pay $147.00 upfront and they give you 30 days to change your mind for a refund. Atticus is comparing itself to the industry standard, Vellum, the book creation software which I’ll get into next. At first glance, things looked good for Atticus.
I frequent the Kindlepreneur site often because there is a ton of informative up-to-date material that touches every aspect of self-publishing. So I didn’t hesitate long before purchasing Atticus with the sole intent of replacing Scrivener. I imported the book I’m currently working on into Atticus and began putting it through its paces.
My first hiccup came when I couldn’t import my Scrivener file and keep the scene structure intact. It wasn’t the app’s fault, so they get a pass for that. It only set me back a few hours while I manually recreated it. What I didn’t give them a pass for was their implementation of scenes. I did a lot of research before purchasing and was sure I read the program supported scenes. And it does, but currently only by using the built-in auto naming structure. Once I started renaming their default scene names with the ones I use, weird things happened, like the renamed scenes disappeared or got realigned. New scenes got inserted into the list at random positions and my attempts to move them where I wanted them didn’t stick. When I closed and came back into the program, the scene positions were all out of order again. I gave up, reported it to support, and moved on.
My second hiccup was the lack of a dark mode. I work primarily in the wee hours of the morning and the bright white screen simply doesn’t work for me. A dark mode update is in the works, along with other features. It was such an annoyance, though, I’ve stopped using the program. I may go back to it when some of the new features are implemented, but for now, there are enough quirks that it simply does not work for me.
Bottom line, Atticus is a good work in progress. With that said, I still think it’s worth checking out. Here’s the link, Atticus.
Now let’s look at the competition. As I think back on my issues with Scrivener and Atticus, I guess it was inevitable I land on Vellum.
Vellum:
So this is one of those things I knew I would come back to, but, for whatever reason, I thought I needed a bit of pain in my life before making the commitment. Vellum is a name I kept coming across as I searched for Page Layout software. There seems to be no dispute that it is the top dog. There were two distinct drawbacks, though. Cost and the fact that it is only available for Mac. Being a Mac user, that part was not an issue for me.
One workaround for Windows users is a service called Macincloud, which allows you to “rent” a virtual Mac. As of this writing, their pricing plans range from $1.00 per hour to starting at $49.00 per month. Here’s a link to their site. Macincloud.
The second drawback was the price. They offer two one-time price structures: Vellum Ebooks for $199.99, and Vellum Press for $249.99. The Ebooks version will only do Ebooks, the Press version does both Ebook and Print. The good thing about it is that you can download and use the program to layout your page design just the way you want it and then purchase a license to enable the publishing feature. I’m using it now and find that even the text editor is decent. Unless something blows up with it when I’m ready to publish, I’ll likely purchase it. With Vellum, fingers crossed, I think I’ve finally found my Scrivener replacement. I’ll admit the writing environment is not nearly as robust as Scrivener, but then it’s not designed to be a writing app. I’ve adapted to it well and really enjoy the overall environment. Check it out here. Vellum.
Note:
Checkout Part Two of this Article with my clear winner of the choices I talk about here.
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