Why has almost nobody here heard of Book Writer? Is everyone here still using Word? With an air of cartoonish silliness, "this is absolutely unacceptable!". I did a search of the forums, but didn't find ANYTHING about Book Writer.
Just to explain where I'm coming from, I spent years using Word, and wrote the first and second drafts of my first novel in it, thinking that it was all I needed. People always asked me why I didn't get a serious program for books, but I said, "Who needs them? All I really need to do is write." I knew that I didn't want to add complication to my work, and ONLY wanted the ability to "just write", but I finally came to the point where I had to split my book into chapters, to make it easier to manage. So, I wanted to find a tool that could help divide it up, yet keep it all in front of me, so I could easily hop around the book, without getting lost or wasting time opening individual chapter files and trying to find certain parts.
After trying the demos of several book writing programs (all of which were overridden with useless tools, like plot-summarizers, character-developers, and other highly pretentious "automation" features) I stumbled across this little $45 program called Book Writer, and decided to give the demo a try.
After wrestling with it for about five minutes, before I figured out how to setup a book project (a lot of people can't figure it out, but it's very easy - just use the help menu), I started tinkering around, and set up my book in it.
I guess you can say that the rest is history. I've been using it for almost 2 years now, and simply don't know what I would do without it. And no, I'm not trying to sell it.
While not perfect (I've tried to get them to fix some things, but they haven't), it has still handled my projects without a hitch, and I could never use anything else in it's place. Using it, you can do a word lookup, and it will spit out a list of every instance of it in the entire book. You can click any line, and it will take you right to it, and hilight it for you. Before, I would have said, "When would I actually NEED such a tool?", but alas, I honestly use this tool about five times a day, every... single... day. Just the same, you can replace every instance of a word with another, making it dangerously easy to rename places, characters, and omit certain words altogether. I've used this effectively nearly thirty times in my latest book. For example, what if you decide that "Arkaylie" is a stupid name, and want to change all 1,200 instances of it to just "Amy"? Two seconds later, it's already done.
Likewise, what if you decide to change "ork" into "molossus", then decide you need to try out a few more names before deciding on one? No problem. Apply the changes, then read a few paragraphs in context, and see what you think.
Anyway, I hope more of you get this program, because it bothers me to see so many authors using simple word processors. I have absolutely nothing to do with the makers of it, but just shake my head when I see so many writers NOT using it, while I sit here and think how I couldn't do without it. It's just bothersome; it's like having the only electric lights in the world, and wondering why everyone else is still using candles. To put simply, this is THE writer's tool right here, and simply makes the task or organizing and working with a book so much easier. I just finished a 240,000 word novel in it, which, you can imagine would need a ton of control and versatility in order to keep all the ideas on track. Just to give you an idea of what that's like, let me just say you could never do it with just CTRL+F.
If you'd like to take it for a spin, you can get the demo here:
http://www.yadudigital.com/products/bookwriter.htm
A few features can be slightly elusive (I'm not sure why they designed one or two things this way), so here's how to do them:
Spellcheck correction: right-click on the underlined word, then hit Alt. It will change the menu into the correction menu.
Combine into a single document: to compile your book into a single document, go to Project Menu, then choose "Merge RTF Files Into One". You only need to do this if you're sending a manuscript to someone, or need to print the whole darn thing.
Word Count: after merging everything into one file, go to File menu > Properties > Statistics tab. This shows you much more than just word count.
Dictionary / Thesaurus: Go to Tools menu, and choose Thesaurus/Dictionary. This is a GREAT tool, which you can download seperately if you do a Google search for "word web" (it's the first result).
--- Anyway, I won't be happy until everyone on these forums can say, "So, what do you write with?" "Book Writer. What else?"
It just makes me frown when I hear about serious authors still using MS Word. I've used it for years, and still use it, but not for my books anymore.
Just to explain where I'm coming from, I spent years using Word, and wrote the first and second drafts of my first novel in it, thinking that it was all I needed. People always asked me why I didn't get a serious program for books, but I said, "Who needs them? All I really need to do is write." I knew that I didn't want to add complication to my work, and ONLY wanted the ability to "just write", but I finally came to the point where I had to split my book into chapters, to make it easier to manage. So, I wanted to find a tool that could help divide it up, yet keep it all in front of me, so I could easily hop around the book, without getting lost or wasting time opening individual chapter files and trying to find certain parts.
After trying the demos of several book writing programs (all of which were overridden with useless tools, like plot-summarizers, character-developers, and other highly pretentious "automation" features) I stumbled across this little $45 program called Book Writer, and decided to give the demo a try.
After wrestling with it for about five minutes, before I figured out how to setup a book project (a lot of people can't figure it out, but it's very easy - just use the help menu), I started tinkering around, and set up my book in it.
I guess you can say that the rest is history. I've been using it for almost 2 years now, and simply don't know what I would do without it. And no, I'm not trying to sell it.
While not perfect (I've tried to get them to fix some things, but they haven't), it has still handled my projects without a hitch, and I could never use anything else in it's place. Using it, you can do a word lookup, and it will spit out a list of every instance of it in the entire book. You can click any line, and it will take you right to it, and hilight it for you. Before, I would have said, "When would I actually NEED such a tool?", but alas, I honestly use this tool about five times a day, every... single... day. Just the same, you can replace every instance of a word with another, making it dangerously easy to rename places, characters, and omit certain words altogether. I've used this effectively nearly thirty times in my latest book. For example, what if you decide that "Arkaylie" is a stupid name, and want to change all 1,200 instances of it to just "Amy"? Two seconds later, it's already done.
Likewise, what if you decide to change "ork" into "molossus", then decide you need to try out a few more names before deciding on one? No problem. Apply the changes, then read a few paragraphs in context, and see what you think.
Anyway, I hope more of you get this program, because it bothers me to see so many authors using simple word processors. I have absolutely nothing to do with the makers of it, but just shake my head when I see so many writers NOT using it, while I sit here and think how I couldn't do without it. It's just bothersome; it's like having the only electric lights in the world, and wondering why everyone else is still using candles. To put simply, this is THE writer's tool right here, and simply makes the task or organizing and working with a book so much easier. I just finished a 240,000 word novel in it, which, you can imagine would need a ton of control and versatility in order to keep all the ideas on track. Just to give you an idea of what that's like, let me just say you could never do it with just CTRL+F.
If you'd like to take it for a spin, you can get the demo here:
http://www.yadudigital.com/products/bookwriter.htm
A few features can be slightly elusive (I'm not sure why they designed one or two things this way), so here's how to do them:
Spellcheck correction: right-click on the underlined word, then hit Alt. It will change the menu into the correction menu.
Combine into a single document: to compile your book into a single document, go to Project Menu, then choose "Merge RTF Files Into One". You only need to do this if you're sending a manuscript to someone, or need to print the whole darn thing.
Word Count: after merging everything into one file, go to File menu > Properties > Statistics tab. This shows you much more than just word count.
Dictionary / Thesaurus: Go to Tools menu, and choose Thesaurus/Dictionary. This is a GREAT tool, which you can download seperately if you do a Google search for "word web" (it's the first result).
--- Anyway, I won't be happy until everyone on these forums can say, "So, what do you write with?" "Book Writer. What else?"
It just makes me frown when I hear about serious authors still using MS Word. I've used it for years, and still use it, but not for my books anymore.
Last edited:
