What apps do you use for writing, editing, cover art etc?

glendalough

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I love my Ipad and my Imac. What apps do you use for your writing, be it cover art or just writing etc?
 

allanpsand

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I use FrontPage for the initial draft effort. Basically, I generate a mini-web site using a TOC frame panel and Main frame panel. I can have multiple pages open on a tabbed layout. "ideas.htm" - inspirations outside of the book. "concepts.htm" for development thoughts. Plus pages being developed.

The TOC frame keeps track of my book structure and I can move topics around as the book develops.

Send out all review copies as RTF with review tracking turned on. Anything touched shows up.

I design the front cover in Word, adding text and graphics to a pre-sized single-row/column table - text boxes work great for this. Inserted graphics can be grayed or faded as needed. I save as PDF, and then open in Acrobat and save as JPG. This gives me a graphic of the entire front cover - an easy insertion into all ebook formats. (I stay away from embedded text in images.)

I use Acrobat for all final copies. PDF is becoming a common readable format across all eReaders. It's too bad that the current ebook outlets (Amazon, B&N, etc.) don't or won't sell PDF formatted books.

To create multiple formats, I use Calibre. To edit ePub, I use Sigil. Get MobiPocket to review files for formatting and layout.
 

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On Mac OS X, I use BBEdit, Stanza, Calibre, Scrivener, and Pages for formatting; the cover image is another person's responsibility, but generally, Photoshop and Illustrator.
 

kuwisdelu

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Pages has a nice export to ePub feature that comes out looking very good if you use the proper styles.
 
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Do you want PC ones, too? ;)

OpenOffice for writing and editing (technically, LibreOffice now). Also use that for export of the .doc and Kindle upload. Calibre for basic conversions. Definitely Photoshop for cover work - no replacement, for me, used it too many years for other things. Playing with InDesign to learn print formating, which is a new form of typography for me (done ads and magazines, but not books).
 

Carradee

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All my drafting and revising is in Scrivener, which I can also use to produce some e-book formats. I have a PowerPC Mac, though, so I can't use the Kindle plug-in. I therefore export as HTML and modify it by hand with TextWrangler to create the Kindle document. (Scrivener produces rather clean HTML.) MS Word is easiest to use for Smashwords and Nook formats.

For the interior layout I'm preparing for print versions, I'm using Pages.

For cover art, I use a combo of GIMP and Seashore. Seashore's a neutered version of GIMP that's terrible with text, but it runs better on my old, slow computer.