How Much Does Scrivener Cost, REALLY?
DON'T Buy Scrivener Until You Read This Entire Post!
"How much does Scrivener cost?”
Once new authors read for the hundredth time, from every author in the blog-o-sphere, that Scrivener is the greatest thing to happen to self published author's since Amazon and the laptop, that's the very first question they ask me.
I understand the impulse—I'm a penny-pinching indie author miser too—but "how much Scrivener costs" is the wrong question.
Even at full retail, Scrivener's well worth the "price"...
So, how much is Scrivener?
What most new authors mean when they ask how much Scrivener costs is, "What's the Scrivener price?”
It's only natural. As self-published authors, we're bombarded by micro costs on what feels like a daily basis. Between my email marketing costs, my web server costs, the price to do a book promotion, buying plugins to make my WordPress site less vulnerable to those pesky hackers, it seems like I'm being "priced" to death.
But here's some good news fellow indies, Scrivener's price is the least expensive, most valuable piece of software you'll wonder how you ever managed without.
Here's the breakdown of Scrivener price by version:
- The MAC version of Scrivener costs (at full retail) at the time of this post, roughly $45 - That's it! Trust me even at full retail price, it's a bargain. Pray that Keith and friends over at Literature and Latte NEVER come to their senses and raise the price!
- The WINDOWS version of Scrivener costs (at full retail) at the time of this post, roughly $40. There are slightly fewer bells and whistles on the Windows version to justify the just a tad cheaper Scrivener price.
But wait! That doesn't mean you can't save a few bucks on Scrivener, because aren't we all continual "students" in this business?
- The MAC "EDUCATION" version of Scrivener costs (at full retail) at the time of this post, roughly $38.25 - Not bad, but hang on until the end, because we can do better.
- The WINDOWS "EDUCATION" version of Scrivener costs (at full retail) at the time of this post, roughly $35 - That's a pretty good price for a piece of software that will save you literally hundreds of hours over your lifetime as an author.
Remember, don't buy it until you get to the end...
Okay, okay, I get it—I'm a little heavy-handedly alluding to a nuance here in the difference between Scrivener's price and Scrivener's cost, so...
How much does Scrivener cost vs its price?
Admittedly, Scrivener is relatively inexpensive at under $50 for a writing platform that allows you to do everything from outlining, to mind mapping, organizing, detailing, editing, and also allows you to compile manuscripts suited for every major platform available to self-published authors. But price is not cost.
The learning curve...
If I'm being honest with you, Scrivener's main cost—what you will exchange for it in value—is the learning curve—your time. You've probably heard about that too.
It's not as bad as you might think.
Imagine if you knew nothing about Excel or MS Word. The learning curve to get up and running proficiently on those would, by today's over-bloated software standards, seem daunting. So as with any new software, Scrivener will cost you mainly in time to get up to speed and using it well.
Don't get me wrong, you can easily open docs in the Scrivener Binder and start typing, but to create outlines, chapters, and entire novels or non-fiction drafts will take some getting used to and exploring the interface. Which is super powerful I might add. And that's a good thing.
Thankfully for those of you just starting out, there are training courses available that you can take to defer some of that Scrivener cost in time.
Learn Scrivener Fast is one such course. Take a look. It's pretty good.
Ready to defer some of that Scrivener cost—sorry, price?
Full disclosure—I regularly maintain a Scrivener Coupon Discount Code post on this site. It contains coupons ranging from 20-25% off of Scrivener and sometimes more.
And yep, I'm not only a fanatical fan of Scrivener but I'm an affiliate too. So if you're ready to make the smartest move of your author career and purchase Scrivener via one of my links, it'll help me defer the cost of maintaining this site and updating the coupon codes on a regular basis.
Keep your eyes peeled and check back regularly, because Literature and Latte recently ran a promotion for 40% off the price of all of their software products and when my readers combined that with a %25 discount code from my Scrivener Discount post, some of them were getting the best writing software ever for less than $19 bucks.
