3 ms·
There must be a better tool for professional writers than Google Docs?!
by kleiba 4y ago
There must be a better tool for professional writers than Google Docs?!
- sn41 4y agoI am not a professional writer, but among the paid tools I have used in the past, I find Scrivener to be pretty nice in helping me organize views. I however find its LaTeX support not very satisfactory, but probably that is not their main target market.
- bluenose69 4y agoFor me, it's vim editing latex files, with git for version control. Others might choose emacs as an editor, but the other decisions are pretty common in my field (physical science).
- kleiba 4y agoYou haven't switched to Overleaf for collaborative editing yet?
- cinntaile 4y agoOverleaf is not really suited for non-technical people, it's not even suited for technical people that are unfamiliar with latex. They could make it much better if you could annotate on the pdf instead for non-technical people and that these annotations (and or changes) get translated to the latex files so the author sees them in the right place as well.
- blackbrokkoli 4y agoI don't think the final edition is going to be made by going to Export To PDF in Google Docs. He seems to be mostly using it as a paste dump, then refining it into chapters, dumping it down, formatting slowly. For that, Google Docs really seems as good as any, no?
- kleiba 4y agoI don't know. Google Docs is a linear tool for linear text, mostly. But the process you describe is anything but linear - it resembles a slow conversion from an unstructured mess to a final text. Intuitively, there seems to be a mismatch between that process and a classic word processor.
- vinner_roy 4y agoWorking on this over at pagespace.app, looking for cofounders if anyone is interested! Notion-like writing experience is the goal with the ability to sell via subscription or per unit.
- greymalik 4y agoI’m not a professional, but I find Scrivener [1] invaluable. Having 600 pages of unstructured, unorganized text would be a nightmare for me. [1] https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview
- thenerdhead 4y agoI used Scrivener to write my two books: https://jondouglas.dev/enough https://jondouglas.dev/enough & https://jondouglas.dev/ptp https://jondouglas.dev/ptp Scrivener is not so great for collaborating though. Nobody on Reedsy seemed to know about the tool from the editor perspective and all asked for Word/Google Docs/Pdf.
- andrei_says_ 4y agoJust finished publishing a 600+ page book for a writer. The collaboration features of Google Docs streamline work with a proofreader and editor better than anything else I’ve seen. Author writes, editor / proofreader suggest changes, author approves. All updates tracked and fairly easy to revert. After editing, docs are exported to rtf and placed in indesign. Google docs are intuitive and easier to use than ms word. No more sending files back and forth. Haven’t seen a better process yet. Some editors still request a printed manuscript for them to put hand-written notes on ;)
- kleiba 4y agoThat makes sense, however, that's already the final stages of the product. I have my doubts that Google Docs is the best choice for the creation of the first draft, though. Once you have that, everything that comes after that is surely in good hands with a traditional word processor, and as you point out, the strength of Google Docs over Word etc. lies in its collaborative abilities.