Scrivener vs yWriter - My decision

[vranger]

So for someone not "in the know" (it didn't occur to me that there was popular software out there for "proper" writers), how worth is it to try out Scrivener for someone that is perfectly happy with Word-like editors? I've been working out of Google Docs for the better part of a decade, but would something like Scrivener increase my productivity or actually help me achieve my writing goals?

I apologize this is so long after your question, but I haven't been on the site in a while.

I like being able to have a separate sub-document for each chapter. A couple of times I've had goofs in Word that lost major pieces of a work in progress, and had to go to a backup to recover and fix the manuscript. That would be much harder to screw up in Scrivener.

When you wish, you can put the entire document in one window, but it's still really the separate sub-documents. I'm big on knowing what my word count is per chapter. In Word, that causes me to frequently scroll up and highlight the current chapter to see the word count in the selected text. (Come to think of it, that's probably how I wind up accidently deleting major areas of text without realizing it). In Scrivener, you have the word count for your current chapter sitting right there, and you simply click on the main nodule for the entire document to see the overall word count.

Scrivener also has a rich facility for creating and organizing notes, nice ways to put two parts of your document "heads up" against each other, and can export your document straight to an epub or mobi (though in my experience it took some trial and error to make that go smoothly). Before I got Scrivener, was was creating mobi files through a calibre conversion.

There are some minor glitches in the Windows version, and I discussed those in some detail with a developer last spring. He assured me that the things I listed are in their current work for the next release. I have no idea when they plan that release.

[LadySilence]

I'm waiting for Black Friday, to be able to finally buy Scrivener.
I have now decided.

[FrancisD]

Look forward to hearing how you get on with the compile function. Personally I don’t. I could not manage to export a manuscript In Word that was formatted properly for submission to and agent, for example.

[LadySilence]

I found myself so well, with Scrivener, I also bought the version for Tablet.