Jer’s Novel Writer approaching public beta

However, what I don’t have is the user registration stuff, which will eventually be part of the commerce solution. The commerce thing will be Web-based, and I want to have my final hosting solution in place first.

So any of you out there have good suggestions about the e-commerce angle? I’ve been looking into PayPal, which seems reasonable, but doesn’t address user codes, software timing out, and stuff like that.

The other requirement for a public beta is a place where people can report bugs, comment on other bugs, and I can update users about progress in fixing those bugs. As long as I have all that, I may as well expand the role of the system into a full BBS where writers can hand out and talk about writing. Or whatever it is they talk about.

This blog entry is really just shameless reuse of the status report I’m adding at jerssoftwarehut.com/. Felt like I had to post something here.

Guess I Should Plug the Software

– not getting stuck on some detail or having t go back and find something you wrote somewhere a hundred pages ago, and inevitably editing instead of getting new ideas down. Of course, when the time comes to edit, you want to be sure you find all the places you weren’t sure about the first time you wrote them. If you’re not sure you will find the trouble spots later, you won’t be able to let them go for now.

Key features are:
– Outline that grows with your work, or you can use to define the parts of your story ahead of time.
– Character database where with two clicks you can store character names and descriptions for later reference.
– Margin notes so you can jot something down next to text you want to revisit later. This is an amazingly handy function.
– Regular note panel so you can remember the last time you ate.
– It actually knows what a chapter is (or whatever organizational structure you want to use).
– Better performance than most word processors for really, really big documents.
– More accurate page count.

If you are interested in the software, drop me a line. Man, I dig those margin notes.