Scrivener for Windows is Coming!

When I speak at writers' conferences, people always ask what software program I use to write (not that any program will write the book for you, but some of them are a lot more fun than others.)

A couple of years ago I discovered Scrivener--I use it and I LOVE it--but it was only available for the Mac. Though I think it's good enough to motivate someone to toss their Windows computer and get a Mac, not everyone felt that way.

But now they can try Scrivener on Windows. And if it's as good as the Mac version, I think soon nearly everyone will be using it.

Here's a letter from one of the Scrivener guys, with news that may interest you:

Hello,

I'm the developer of Scrivener for the Mac and you are receiving this e-mail because at some point over the past year or so you signed up to receive news about a potential Windows version of Scrivener.

I know, since you signed up there has been nothing but tumbleweed.

But: Thanks for signing up, and I hope you're still interested - because finally we have some news. And the news is this:

Scrivener for Windows is on its way.

If you have forgotten entirely what Scrivener even is, well, it's a writing program that allows you to split up a long text into lots of small chunks, to edit them independently or together as one long document, to rearrange them on a corkboard or in an outliner, to view other documents - such as images and PDF files - alongside your text, and then to compile your manuscript into one long document for exporting to a word processor such as Microsoft Word, or for printing. I designed it to help me with my own writing as a wannabe novelist and
someone who had to write a long dissertation. The Mac version is used by best-selling novelists, academics, lawyers, scriptwriters and many other writers. (You can read some of the testimonials of published writers athttp://www.literatureandlatte.com/testimonials.html, but I'm not writing with the intention of giving you the hard sell.)

Enough preamble - onto the news:

• Scrivener for Windows has in fact been in development for the past two years.

• We hope to have it on sale early next year, in late January or February.

• We will be releasing a public beta late next month (around 25th October), so you will be able to download and try it very soon - in time for National Novel Writing Month ( http://www.nanowrimo.org ). (For those who have never used a beta before, a beta version is an early version that is mostly feature-complete but which hasn't been extensively tested yet. This means that there will be bugs we haven't found and it may crash occasionally. The idea of a public beta is that users who are intrepid and don't mind putting up with bugs can use it early to help us find the worst problems before it goes on sale to a wider user-base.
Obviously therefore you should only use the beta if you are happy to put up with problems and back up regularly, but we'll give free copies to those who spend significant time and effort helping us track down bugs.) We'll release more news about where and how to download next month.

• When Scrivener for Windows goes on sale early next year it will cost $40 for the regular licence and $35 for the education license.

• Scrivener for Windows will run on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

• Anyone who participates in NaNoWriMo this year and achieves their 50,000 words (and has them validated) will get a 50% discount coupon which they will be able to use when Scrivener for Windows is released next year.

• To whet your appetite, we have put together a small teaser video, which you can view here, along with more information:

http://www.scrivenerforwindows.com

We are aware that in the past year or two several Scrivener clones have appeared on Windows, but we really hope that you will try out Scrivener for Windows and that, if you were one of the many who have been telling us you wished we produced a version for Windows, you will be as excited as I am about this. The chief Windows developer is an Australian guy called Lee and he has done an amazing job in turning the version of Scrivener I designed for the Mac into a fully-native Windows application.

Thanks again for your interest in Scrivener. If you have any questions, please drop David a line at sales@literatureandlatte.com and he'll be happy to answer them, and please feel free to drop by the user forums at http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forums too.

All the best,
Keith