[Ian Marks]

I'd love to try Vellum but it's Mac only. I'm heavily invested in Windows computers and software and not about to change, so... poo.

I wish someone would come out with a comparable product for the rest of us.

Edit: I just did a little more reading about Vellum and learned that -- apparently -- you have to pay to export your books. If that's true it makes the software a lot less appealing to me.

I have Scrivener for Windows but never quite warmed to it. Maybe that's because I like to write with a my computer screen in the portrait position (so I can see an entire page at once), and Scrivener doesn't like that. If they could make the panes into "tear offs" that I could reposition, that would be great.

 

[Speaker-To-Animals]

Vellum has an option where you can pay by the book or you can pay a one time fee. Think of it as paying someone to format your book and that makes the sales model a little more understandable. (Having said that, I bought the unlimited version.)

The main thing it does that Scrivener or Calibre don't is to add some significant graphic design elements. There are decorative section breaks instead of the centered ***. You can do small caps or a different font as the first line in a new scene/chapter. There are decorative chapter heads with graphics. And the graphics work when someone is reading on a device and has it set to amber or reversed.

What it doesn't do is allow you unfettered ability to adjust the book every which way and that drives some tinkerers crazy, but IMHO there's a lot of ugly books out there that are ugly by intent because the authors don't really know typography. Vellum's pre-made options pretty much guarantee that you can't screw it up and they look great.

 

[CJAnderson]

Is there no Windows equivalent?

 

[CJAnderson]

Nope, it's mac only.

Yes, but I mean has another company tried to copy it. Something equally good, but for Windows. Still a ton of Windows users out there, I would be surprised if there wasn't something.

 

[D-C]

You can pay per book (and make unlimited changes to that book once you've created it once, if that makes sense) or buy the unlimited version.

To play with it, you don't have to pay anything.

I started out paying per book, and then quickly realised I'd be better off getting the unlimited version because of future publishing plans.

Also, I recently exported my vellum doc to rtf and used that to format for a Createspace paperback. So easy! No more double spaces, no more missing page breaks. Awesome!

 

[WDR]

What exactly can you do with Vellum? There's just not a lot of info on the site describing what all you can do. Do you just purchase the $199.99 unlimited version?

Vellum generates an ebook file for your book; nicely and properly formatted and ready for upload to the markets. A valuable asset, I assure you.

The pricing scheme initially put me off Vellum when it first came out, but they have clarified the description of how that works. They list their pricing as per book, but it is more apt to explain it as per title. When you pay the license to generate an ebook file for one book, it locks on the title of the book. You can generate as many ebooks from that one title as you want. Found some mistakes that had to be fixed after the book went for sale? Wanted to rewrite Chapter 7 in a big way? Maybe you just wanted to change the way the typography looks. You can squirt out as many versions as you like.

For me, I have a lot of book ideas in my pipeline, so the $199 option makes a lot of sense for me. I am quite certain I will be generating far more than just ten books over the next decade. The $99 option for ten titles is decent. I balk a little at the $30 for one title, but the guys that wrote the program have to eat, too. And it is still a lot less money than hiring a service bureau to do the work.

Vellum really does generate excellent ebook files, too. It even allows proper creation of drop caps if you want them-I coded mine by hand, but I found the result inconsistent so I didn't include them in my first release. Using Vellum, I see consistent results throughout. Excellent and clean typography. Consistency throughout, and proper page numbering where needed.

I say "Yes!" to Vellum.

 

[ShayneRutherford]

Sounds like it could be a winner in theory for me, but I tried it earlier and found no easy way to get my Scrivener book imported into Vellum. I tried to find the Vellum thread another user mentioned earlier but couldn't. Anyone here write in Scrivener and format in Vellum?

If you want to write in Scrivener and format in Vellum, which is what I do, all you have to do is Compile your manuscript to a .docx file, and then import that into Vellum. It's super easy.

 

[WDR]

The men who created Vellum maintain an official thread here: http://www.kboards.com/index.php?topic=207666.0