Vellum at Mac App Store analyse

Vellum is one of two reasons to own a mac for any indie author. It makes generating files for each of the major etailers a breeze and they’re open to feedback to help improve the program. Cannot recommend highly enough!

The best ebook generator on the market… Really simple and reliable. And the technical support is unbelievable - I had a very minor issue that was easily resolved, yet the support that was provided by Vellum was probably among the best support experiences I’ve ever encountered.

Editing since new info has come to light. First, from within the app if you look for Help > Contact Vellum support … you’ll be able to send them email which they will respond to quickly. Otherwise, finding support help is difficult. I love this application and when I ran into a brick wall trying to get my manuscript to pass Smashwords’ format testing I was dismayed that I might have to spend more to resolve what must be a glitch. Now I’ve got one of the Brads on line and working to resolve this problem and I’m relieved that I don’t have to look for outside help. Otherwise, if you’re an independent author working from a Mac there is no better choice. This is a sweet piece of software.

I’ve been keeping my eye on Vellum for a while. When someone on my writing message board posted their praises and the bonus of a current sale, I immediately came and downloaded it. After going through their easy tutorial, I realized what a find Vellum is for those who want to create professional, slick, outstanding looking e-books. I had problems hooking my two Apple computers to KindleGen and emailed customer service. Within less than 2 minutes, I had an immediate response from the 180 Vellum team. While the problem ended up being on my end, he was totally willing to help me through the problem with screenshots and everything. For those who are looking to format for themselves and want something that is user-friendly and creates a great end product, Vellum may definitely be for you! I also found out, by sharing some new information from another writing message board that someone had posted, that the Vellum team keeps up with the most up-to-date issues that may affect their product. By the time I sent them the link, they had already found it, discussed the issue, and had a plan as to whether or not it affected their product. My guess is that anytime the team runs into a potential problem, they will be fast in solving it in order to keep their customers more than happy. In truth, I’ve got a bit of a tech crush on the Vellum team and am excited to use Vellum for my work.

software is great. nice design. But i can’t even export to a proper word publishing app once i have it organized? not so nice.

I found it quite easy to bring my Word document to this app and select a style that I found appealing. When I ran into a snag uploading my book into Kindle, Vellum Support went above and beyond to make sure that I understood the process and they helped me to pull things together in record time. What could have been a nightmare was actually a dream. Thank you, Vellum!!!!!

The simplicy of this app is absolute marvelous and the addition of in-line graphics in this version makes it even better. I write the hard way, composing in Scrivener and publishing (including print versions) with InDesign because some of my books can get quite complex. But if you’re writing novels, essays, or collections of short stories that don’t need complex formatting and don’t want to klutz with the endless complexities of formatting and layout, this app may be almost perfect for you. I say almost perfect for the same reason I give it four stars. Those who are using Vellum are likely to be writing in scenes which get combined into chapters which then become a novel. This app makes it marvelously easy to rearrange those chapters. That I like. But it offers no way below the chapter level in which to write scenes as items that can be rearranged like chapters. That leaves writers with no option other than the same cut-and-paste curse of Microsoft Word. If Vellum’s developers would like to see how that is done well, they can look at Scrivener’s Binder. I make that suggestion because, were it included, Vellum would be the only app many authors would need. They wouldn’t have to bother with Word. They could write, edit and publish in Vellum alone. That would be the ultimate in simplicity. I do have a couple of other suggestions for the developers. 1. Seriously, seriously consider creating an iPad version. Not only does an app this beautiful almost beg for an iPad version, the preview function could do iPad previews inside the very readers they are being created for. It wouldn’t be emulation. It’d be the real thing. 2. There’s enough need for notes in many books, that it might be worth adding the ability to do pop-up notes in ebooks. I suspect that even clever fiction authors could use them to include clues and background in their stories. For more serious work, notes are a must. I know one scientific publisher who’d love that option for creating mini-books. One final note. This app creates each of the files you need to publish to iBooks, Kindle and Nooks, but it can’t do the uploading for you. You’ll still have to establish author contracts with each retailer and handle the uploads the way that retailer likes. —Michael W. Perry, Inkling Books