One of my favourite Douglas Adams quotes is this:
“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
Well, we’re hearing a bit of a whooshing sound ourselves today. We have been telling people that today, 31st October, would be the official release date of Scrivener for Windows, but – at the last minute – we have made the painful decision to postpone for just one more week, moving the release date back to 7th November. However, as a thank-you to beta-testers, and to make up for this slight delay, we are today making Scrivener for Windows available as a pre-order, with a 10% discount which will be available until the full release on 7th November. So, for the next week, you can buy a licence for $36 instead of $40 (or $31.50 instead of $35 if you are buying the educational licence). Any other discounts floating around (*cough* NaNoWriMo *cough*) can be applied on top of the 10% discount for the regular licence, too.
The Scrivener for Windows pre-order page is now up here:
https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php?platform=win
Thus, you can buy today at a slight discount and enter your serial number next week when Scrivener 1.0 for Windows is released (you will receive your serial number immediately after pre-ordering). Or, if you don’t like pre-orders, you can wait the extra week. And for those beta-testers worried about the expiry date of the current beta, remember that we have a special trial version available for NaNoWriMo that lasts all the way up to 7th December:
https://www.literatureandlatte.com/nanowrimo.php
So, why the delay? Lee, the Windows developer, has been working around the clock to meet this deadline, which we decided on a couple of months ago based on the state of the Windows version at that time. He has been killing himself trying to fix the bugs reported by our excellent beta-testers, and in his attempts to meet the exacting standards we set for ourselves. But as of last night, there were still a few issues that we felt needed addressing before we could truly call this a 1.0 release; things we weren’t comfortable leaving for a 1.0.1 update. We know that pushing the release date back – again – risks annoying some potential users who have been eagerly waiting for the release (which we appreciate, and we hope the discounted pre-order helps), but we’d rather get shouted at for being late than for releasing software with minor glitches we could have ironed out had we taken a few extra days.
Scrivener 1.0 for Windows *is* nearly ready, then – but that “0” signifies only that we’re at the end of the beginning; it’s just the proverbial line in the sand. 1.0 will – we hope! – be awesome, but following 1.0, there will be a 1.0.1, a 1.0.2, a 1.0.3 and so on, as we continue to address any minor issues left over, and then a 1.1 and a 1.2 and onwards as we continue to refine Scrivener for Windows and make it into the best program for writers – and for ourselves – that we can.
Please let me take this opportunity to thank each and every one of our beta-testers, everyone who has blogged about Scrivener for Windows, and all those who have been eagerly awaiting its release. We hope you’ll enjoy using Scrivener on both platforms – hopefully see you back here next week. Thanks!