So Hey, Katherine, How Do You Lay Out Your Books?

For my eBooks (I have one for sale and a slew of mailing list extras), I use Draft2Digital���s converter��� but might end up using Sigil. I used to do webdev, a million years ago, and am comfortable in HTML and CSS. But I have yet to play with that. I mean, D2D produces lovely ebooks, but I might get custom chapter headings if I self-pub my novel…

For my print books? Scribus.

So, as you may know, I���ve long been a FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) booster. As such, I was happy to download Scribus and flail around in it.

I have to say that, well. I���ve long had a love/hate relationship with Scribus. I mean, I love it because it���s FOSS, it���s free as in beer and I can use it to turn out lovely books. But I���d be lying if I said there wasn���t a learning curve, and that I haven’t gotten very frustrated with Scribus from time to time–once to the point of vowing to pay for layout next time. My frustration is mostly the lack of wysiwyg/italic import kind of thing, although also I use it infrequently enough that I’m sometimes driven to a search engine to use basic functions. But I think I’m getting used to it? (True facts: I downloaded someone’s template and used that.)

It’s a sort of sweat equity: In exchange for not spending $22.99 a month for the best-known paid competitor, or buying a book layout program for $150-$250, I download free programs and flail around in a search engine. ���� I mean, I’m an IT person so it’s kind of fun for me, and I valorize my frustration and remember it more fondly than I should?

Would I recommend Scribus?

Are you in IT? Yes.Are you DEAD BROKE? Yes.Are you a DIY sort? Yes.Are you the sort of person who fantasizes about throwing your computer off the roof with a trebuchet whenever you run into a problem? NO.

As you were.