[ale] recommended writing tool in anticipation of commercial submission

[List]

Depends.  If you are submitting copy only, which will be edited and 
typeset by others, it is best to stay pretty simple.  Everybody takes 
Microsoft Word's .doc format, .rtf, and WordPerfect .wpd.  If they are 
going to do the page layouts, this is probably as much formatting as 
they want or need.

If you are submitting to a printer (as opposed to a publisher) or are 
interested in doing some or all of the page layout yourself, then 
Adobe's Framemaker is by far the tool of choice, followed by Quark 
Express.  All printing houses take these file formats and can do 
miracles with them.  Some like Adobe's InDesign, but in my experience 
this is better suited to short works with a lot of graphics, such as 
brochures, catalogs, or short marketing materials.

Avoid LaTex or any of the other manual page markup languages.  Many 
(perhaps even most) publishers, and all printers that I am aware of, 
will have to strip out that formatting and reformat in some more 
publishing friendly system, costing you money and them aggravation.  
There is a substantial religious following for LaTex in the Unix 
community, but a writer will do well to resist the techie love for such 
tools.

I use Framemaker, and have had fantastic results with it, after climbing 
the (somewhat steep) learning curve.

Tom

Courtney Thomas wrote:
> What writing software is recommended by an author anticipating submission to
> commercial publishers ?
>
> Appreciatively,
> Courtney
>
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