We’ve mentioned the e-writing app Scrivener (available for Windows or OS X) a time or two, and some of our commenters have expressed fondness for it. Indeed, even my brother loves it and has been pestering me to try it; he seems to think that lack of Scrivener is all that’s keeping me from writing the next Great American Novel. I have to admit, with the things I’m seeing about it I’m definitely starting to get tempted to try it out. On The Creative Penn, writer Joanna Penn blogs that she used Scrivener for her latest book, and that...

Fair’s fair. If we get upset over something Apple’s done, we should also mention when they fix it. So, remember the kerfuffle over Apple apparently claiming rights in the user agreement over commercial sale of any e-book created in iBooks Author? Well, Ars Technica reports that Apple has just released a patch to the app, and iBooks Author v1.01 includes a clarification in the EULA: it specifically covers only e-books generated in the interactive .ibooks format. (Emphasis mine.) If you want to charge a fee for a work that includes files in the .ibooks format generated...

My aging laptop, a trusty and wonderful device–on which I’ve composed five novels, countless articles, poems and pieces—is nearing the end of its existence. I extended its life expectancy substantially by replacing various components as they wore out, namely the hard drive and battery pack, but still the Time Has Come to replace the device altogether. Recently, while standing in line at a coffee-shop, I observed an individual place a roll-out rubberized keyboard on a small bistro table and then plug it into his smartphone. He put the android device on a small stand and began typing away like mad. This...

Over the last few days, I’ve done something I’ve always meant to get around to but hadn’t yet: worked my way through the entire canon of Sherlock Holmes stories via their posting on Google Books. (Except for the last story collection, of course, which is not yet in the public domain in the US.) After that, I happened onto an interesting Conan Doyle work called Through the Magic Door, in which the author looks at his own bookshelf and discusses each of the works that are dear to his own heart. The first few paragraphs of the book especially...

On FutureBook, Steve Richards (managing director of social media agency Yomego) has a brief piece looking at the rising popularity of online worlds (such as Pottermore and Scholastic’s Horrible Histories World) as ways to market books to kids. He offers a number of suggestions for how the runners of those virtual worlds can make them more attractive and user-friendly to their target audience. Online environments don’t signal the death of reading – far from it. They can actively promote books to children, and pique their interest in new characters and stories. But just as a child...

Baen Books and the National Space Society are hosting a writing contest in memory of the late Jim Baen. Entries must be prose and less than 8,000 words, showing “the near future (no more than about 50-60 years out) of manned space exploration.” There is no fee to enter, but only one entry is allowed per person. Entries are to be submitted in RTF format via e-mail. WHAT WE DO WANT TO SEE: Moon bases, Mars colonies, orbital habitats, space elevators, asteroid mining, artificial intelligence, nano-technology, realistic spacecraft, heroics, sacrifice, adventure....

  To sell or not to sell? That, is the million-dollar question for writers. There exists within most novelists a book they’d love to write; a book that they hope–beyond all hope–that someday they’ll be famous enough to be able to write (but know secretly in their hearts that it would likely never make it past an editor’s desk.) “It wouldn’t sell…” is a horrible utterance that often accompanies such attempts at passing one’s beloved manuscript on to folks that can get it in print. “Can’t you write something about vampires in traumatic throes...

Economist David Harrington has an article looking at anti-plagiarism service Turnitin, discussing how effective it is, how easy it is to fool, and how it can actually help students conceal evidence of their plagiarism. One of the points Harrington makes is that Turnitin can’t scan the whole web. Using the example of a book that read like it was in large part cribbed from New York Times articles, he found that Turnitin wasn’t able to index the Times articles because the site’s archives are behind a paywall. And another point is that the service offers a tool...

It’s an old story: as automation gets better, it makes it possible to eliminate jobs and save money. It’s an old story in the physical manufacturing industry, But until recently, writers would have thought they were safe. But progress marches on. The New York Times has a lengthy article about a computerized article writer that takes statistics and turns them into prose. It can be used on sports games, financial reports, and other statistics that lend themselves to forming narratives. The leaders of Narrative Science emphasized that their technology would be primarily a low-cost...

We all know about e-readers, but what about e-writers? Improv Electronics will be releasing a new version of its “Boogie Board” LCD stylus-based writing device in November. A very specialized form of tablet, the Boogie Board allows users to jot notes on the screen that show up in white on a black background. Writing on the device does not require power, but erasing the screen does. The prior, $40 version of the board had very limited usefulness given that there was no way to save what was written down, but the new version allows writers to export their work...

A rash of rather mercenary comments attached to a recent article posted on TeleRead got me thinking about why most book writers even embark on a journey of penning literature, let alone attempt to sell their ‘wares’ to an extremely diverse and opinionated public. Some may indeed be in it simply for “the solid cash,” as Nathaniel Hawthorne once said… though one must point out that any form of payment was third (and last) on his list of writing reasons. Most writers I know–including my husband and myself–start creating a book because of an idea,...

Last year, we mentioned a new cellphone-novel- and social-network-inspired collaborative writing startup called Figment, mostly targeted at teenagers. PaidContent reports that the site secured $1 million in funding two months ago, and is now launching a tolerance-themed collaborative writing contest in cooperation with MTV. The contest will observe the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack, and involves writing stories about characters confronting intolerance. The twist is that writers have to use characters and settings that were created by other writers on the site. The contest runs through August 31, to give time for judging by the anniversary...