Starting to write a book with Scrivener (daily snippet)

Yesterday, I fiddled with Scrivener to setup a writing environment for my new book. Here are my learnings.

Published: July 25, 2023

Yesterday, I read a short book called Show Your Work by Austin Kleon. He suggests sharing a small part of your daily work process. This concept isn't just for builders (a.k.a. "build in public") but applies broadly. We can learn from each other's shared experiences.

Inspired by this, I chose to share my experience of starting to write a book titled "Marketing for Introverts." I used Scrivener, an authoring tool that allows exporting in various formats, including Multimarkdown. This will help me create a printed book as well as versions for Kindle and ePub readers.

I wrote some sample pages and exported them into Multimarkdown, then converted them to TeX format which then created a beautiful PDF.

However, setting up the correct metadata in Scrivener for Multimarkdown and TeX was challenging. Finally, I figured out the right metadata snippet which could help if you're planning to use Scrivener or Multimarkdown and TeX for writing your own book. I share it here.

This is the snippet of Metadata, it must be the first small document in your Scrivener file:

LaTeX Config: memoir-book
Printmode: mc
Format: complete
Base Header Level: 1