Part 2 in a Post by Bobbye Marrs, SkipJack Publishing Assistant Extraordinaire
Start from the beginning, HERE, with Part 1.
CUSTOMER SERVICE
I have a love-hate relationship with PressBooks’ support. They seem like really nice people, but every time I’ve had an issue they start their “support” by sending me the User’s Guide. This has caused me to totally lose my religion. If I’m contacting support it means I’ve already looked in the User’s Guide, researched the internet, and tried to figure it out myself. Because I’m usually doing something more complicated than the typical user such as modifying the CSS, it takes several emails back and forth before I get to someone who can help me. They are a small company so I’m typically dealing with the same 2 people, but their developer only works part time. This wasn’t an issue. Until it was.
As of this writing I’m a month behind on an update project. And we always have an update project going on. PressBooks made modifications to at least one of the theme’s CSS. What this means is that when I went to make the PDF the page numbers didn’t come out right. Pamela has 15 print books. That 15 covers and some hard covers. These are designed to fit an exact page number. So I can’t have a 325-page PDF today and a 360-page PDF tomorrow. I figured out a way around the problem, but I spent a lot of time trying to fix this. Pamela writes about PressBooks in her book, What Kind of Loser Indie Publishes. We give them a lot of business and send a lot of business their way so I was disappointed at this blot on their almost perfect record.
COLLABORATION
One great thing about PressBooks is that it’s online so if you have an assistant or expect to collaborate with anyone, it can all be done online. If you want to update your bio, you can just get on there and do it because it’s not like the files are sitting somewhere on your assistant’s hard drive.
Scrivener limits the possibility of online collaboration because it’s on your computer. This would be fine for me for my own work in progress because sadly, I don’t have an assistant. So this isn’t an issue. Also, Scrivener’s website says they’re working on potentially having something online in the future. And they also have an iPad and iPhone app which I haven’t tried, but if you like that kind of stuff (and I do) it would be worth exploring. You can sync your devices using Dropbox so your masterpiece isn’t stuck at home while you’re out having an epiphany that you need to jot down.
PRICE
Scrivener is absolutely the best price. It’s $45 and it comes with a free trial for 30 actual days. When I first heard about Scrivener I thought the it would be outrageously expensive. I thought it was $45 a month. Not so. You do have to pay for a separate license for each platform such as your iPhone and your Mac or PC, but it’s still a bargain.
PressBooks is more expensive, but it’s not a deal breaker. You can begin using it for free. Downloads will have a PressBooks watermark in them. If you’re just wanting to do ebooks you upgrade for $19. If you’re adding in the PDF you upgrade for $99. They have a couple of ½ off sales a year so if you’re savvy you can always upgrade for $49.50. That is per book though where Scrivener is a one-time payment. But if you’re looking for ease of use it’s totally worth it.
END PRODUCT/BELLS AND WHISTLES
In less than an hour I can have a nice looking book using PressBooks. One reason I ditched Scrivener in the middle of trying to figure it out was that each of our authors have a specific style. As I’ve updated Pamela’s What Doesn’t Kill You series, I’ve tried to make it uniform. Adding in a new program would’ve totally put a kink in that plan.
Even though I wasn’t able to get the right end product in the short amount of time I allotted for this research project, I am still completely impressed with Scrivener’s bells and whistles. For my current work in progress my work is spread out over a three-ring binder, a couple of spiral notebooks, multiple Word documents for the outline, the character arcs, the original manuscript, the rewrite, 2 manuscript consults, and a junky style sheet. The idea of being able to put this all in one neat and tidy place is very alluring. You can even add movie clips, PDFs, images and work on your screenplay. Imagine the possibilities. Do you ever give birth to a plot bunny in the most inconvenient time and place? I wrote the entire outline for my 2nd novel waiting in the doctor’s office on a receipt from the depths of my purse. I don’t have a clue where that ended up.
CONCLUSION
So what’s the bottom line? Which one will I be using in the future? Well this isn’t a Robert Frost poem so when two roads diverged in a yellow wood I decided to travel both. I actually really like both of these programs. I will use Scrivener for planning and writing my next novel and I may even use it to produce the files. But until I master it, I’m sticking with PressBooks for the work I do for SkipJack authors because it’s fast, easy, and mostly reliable.
Bobbye
Bobbye Marrs is a supermom extraordinaire with currently 5 jobs, 4 teenagers, 2 dogs, and a husband crazy enough to be a pastor. When she’s not working or 
learning some new hobby like the HAM radio, she is trying to be a romantic mystery writer. Look for her book, I Am My Beloved’s to debut this spring. In the meantime, she started a t-shirt business to support her writing habit at www.greetingsfrommarrs.com.
Great job–I love this blog, and not just because you do such a great job on my books. 🙂
For those of you that might not know Bobbye is one of the awesome employees of SkipJack Publishing. She does work for all of our authors and has become an expert in her own right on this world of Publishing that we live in. Any of our authors (or by-the-hour customers) who have had the opportunity to work with her know exactly what I am talking about.
Interesting post, Bobbye. I tried Scrivener because I’d heard so much about it, but it frustrated me so much that I stopped and went back to Word. I realize you’re talking a bigger step further with formatting books. What limited use I do with Pressbooks, I like it because it’s so similar to WordPress. However, I think I’m going to give Scrivener another try with my next book and force myself to get over the learning curve.
Thanks.