For those of you just starting out or looking for a great overview of all of Scrivener’s main features, TidBITS Publishing have just published a new e-book in their popular “Take Control” series entitled “Take Control of Scrivener 2”. It’s written by Kirk McElhearn, an experienced author and senior contributor to Macworld magazine who is a Scrivener user himself.
“Take Control of Scrivener 2” covers everything you need to know to get up and running with Scrivener, including using the binder, outliner and corkboard, the main writing tools, comments and annotations, revision, how to sync with an iPad and how to compile your text for submission or as an e-book. It’s an ideal companion to Scrivener’s own help materials - if you’ve been through the tutorial and now want a more practical guide to take you through using the program for real-world projects, but don’t want to dig into the comprehensive 400-page Scrivener manual until you need to, the Take Control book may be ideal.
Oh, and it uses Moby Dick as an example writing project, which is apt when you consider that Melville wrote a short story called “Bartleby the Scrivener”. A sample of the contents can be found here:
I should add that the book is geared towards the Mac version, although Windows users may find it useful too if you are happy to skip the sections covering features that the Windows version doesn’t have yet. The sections on using the main features - the binder, outliner, corkboard and suchlike - may still prove helpful to Windows users. (If the book proves popular there may be a separate Windows version a few months down the line though.)
I hope it proves helpful - I think Kirk has done a fantastic job in covering all the main aspects of using Scriv.
There seems to be something wrong with Esellerate: I tried twice to buy the ebook and pay via Paypal. After confirming the Paypal transaction I was back in Esellerate on the Order Confirmation page - which was empty. On the first attempt I didn’t realize that and closed the page.
Wondering why no DL link was sent to my email address, I checked my Paypal account: No money had been transferred.
Then I tried again to buy the ebook and landed on the empty Order Confirmation page, again. I entered the information a third time and proceeded - just to be back on the Paypal page.
Yes, sorry about this. There does indeed seem to be some problem buying the book using PayPal and I’ve no idea why - we’ve e-mailed our eSellerate rep and hope to have it sorted out shortly. We’ll post here as soon as it is fixed. All other payment methods should work okay, it seems specifically to be a problem with PayPal. Sorry for the inconvenience.
In that case you probably just need to quit and restart your browser - it sounds like a caching problem. There’s definitely not a general problem with buying the book, just a possible PayPal issue.
I’ve tried hard to buy this (Paypal and 2 different credit cards - one of which immediately worked elsewhere). Paypal claimed not available after a time-out, both cards claim I entered something wrong or to contact my bank.
I was troubled by that, too. But I trust that the L&L folks are honest brokers.
So I bought a copy today and appreciate that we get it in both pdf and epub formats.
Entering all the information is just how eSellerate’s ordering system works - it all goes on our customer database (and obviously we do nothing heinous with it). If you want more info, you can email support@esellerate.com and ask them, but I guess it’s just a standard order form.