@Mr.Nylock, I mentioned Dragon for windows, didn’t know it runs on linux…
@Merneith, the formatting point is a good one. Either it needs to have NO formatting at all or be created using the correct style. I know from work that assistants have a terrible time if they need to fix messed up formatting from users messing with their own Word documents.
@Joey P also makes a good point about typists not reading the content. I used to type manuscripts, and I’d have no clue what it was about. I used to listen to music. If somebody came to his house to type on a machine that stands alone, they couldn’t do anything with what they type for him-they’d have to absorb it (and I don’t think you can when you’re touch-typing at speed) and then remember it. A reputable agency is not going to have its people try to rip off some budding novelist. They make their money from supplying competent, reliable, and honest skilled people. It’s a huge gamble to assume that his work will be a huge success so as to scupper where they do earn their money.
Getting a typist sounds like a pretty good idea. I used to type years ago, but the formatting on Word is terribly complicated nowadays. Getting the correct style/formatting in it would/could be money well spent.
Why did he use a pencil?
A guy with a sword stole his pen.
For Microsoft, the EULA ties the OS as well as the Office suite to one user on one machine(for your normal everyday personal user). Microsoft wouldn’t know if there was a new user, but if you ever needed support you wouldn’t get very far without the product key.
One person selling/giving a computer to another without uninstalling all the proprietary software would violate the EULA(the long thing everyone clicks accept on but almost no one ever reads). Microsoft isn’t really going to come after an individual for that; they do, from what I have read, come after small businesses if they do that sort of thing, so anyone reselling old computers might want the hard drives wiped. Usually with a thrift store I think its the donators wiping the hard drive for security reasons. I actaully talked to a guy once that even insisted on removing the RAM sticks from computers he was donating.
If you get Wine, you can run it on Linux. I just looked it up right now, it’s not something I knew off the top of my head. I don’t think trying it on an old machine would work well, I think you would need a good amount of processing power and sufficient RAM for something like Dragon.
No. There is no such requirement at all. An OEM computer with OEM licences can be transferred to somebody else. Retail software licences can be transferred as long as you transfer the discs and also uninstall it first from wherever else you might have been using it. There’s no requirement to keep it yourself. If a computer in a secondhand shop has been wiped, that’s not because anybody was required to do that.
Not ancient, no, you’d definitely need “minimum specs”. It runs on my Win7 machine which is no great shakes, component-wise. If you wanted to run it using wine, I think you’d need a fair bit of hardware “grunt”. I don’t know, it was just another suggestion to consider, if the “guy” can’t type. A decent specced win7 Dell business machine would probably cover all bases.
Is he planning on self-publishing, or trying to find an actual publisher?
Because, if the book is going to be professionally published, the best way to type it is with a text (not word) processor. No formatting at all - just plain text, with consistent sentence and paragraph endings. Just like a typewriter (except, no hard returns). The publisher will take that and lay it out to fit the book format.
One can be a tech-phobic luddite without being silly or paranoid.
Does he realize that publishers require a digital file that will be opened on a computer with an internet connection? Or if he wants to register his copyright he’ll need to submit a digital file?
And if he’s a “total luddite” does he know how to use computer HW+SW? If not, he should pay somebody to do it. But wait–they might steal his masterpiece. And could he trust someone at the copyright office to not steal his work?
A tech question: If he used a Linux Live CD/DVD/USB, he can save files, correct? But only to a different USB stick?
Well, you can in Puppy, but I would be saving anything important to the hard disk/s. Not sure whether you could use the same usb from which the OS is loaded, I can’t remember (and I never save any data to the same place as the OS).
This. If he does it himself, the moment he turns on the computer it is going to want to update Windows, which will be tough with no Internet connection.
Linux is fine, but when he runs into something he doesn’t understand (which will happen daily) good luck with finding a neighbor or local kid who understands it.
LibreOffice is the best bet for word processing. OpenOffice is still owned by Oracle, and I wouldn’t trust them to keep it updated. Word is way too complicated these days. There are some incompatibilities with LibreOffice and Word, but nothing he is going to see in a manuscript.
I trust he is going to want to revise as he retypes, in which case he’d have to go over everything anyway even if he got a typist.
If he doesn’t think he needs to revise his first draft his chances of selling it are slim to none.
And everyone, please tell me about this arcane style/formatting. The formatting I know about is pretty simple - decent margins, double space, indent first line of paragraph, no space between paragraphs, and header/footer info depending on the market. And fairly common fonts and font sizes. My wife has published somewhere between 10 and 15 books - not self-published - and there is nothing odd about the formatting an agent/publisher wants.
Self publishing I don’t know about personally.
No, it’s not. You only get that “stuff” if you connect to the internet.
If all he will be using in linux is a word-processing program which works on the distribution he wants to use, he won’t be coming across anything with respect to the OS itself. It’s the same as in windows. You open, you type, you save, you don’t suddenly have to hit the MS forums to ask about the OS. Libreoffice is pretty much the same in linux as it is in windows, so any questions about using it will come up regardless of what you are running it on.
IMHO, the suggestions are overly complex. Somebody is always upgrading from a laptop or desktop and you can usually ask around to find a cheap (or free) Windows machine. It can run ANY version of Windows (from Win95 on up) and he’ll have WordPad. (My 90 YO mother used Wordpad to write her newspaper columns. It’s simple as can be.) There will be no licensing issues at all, no additional software to buy, and no security problems, since he won’t even be on-line. Save the files in RTF format, which can easily be converted to other formats if required.
Heck, I have two or three WinXP laptops I’d send to him for free for the cost of shipping.
Ahem
I may be wrong, but this sounds like requirements for submitting a hard copy. Do publishers still want hard copies any more? And I’m sure no publisher would want a digital copy where you manually typed in spaces between the lines (as opposed to clicking a box or whatever to turn on the double-spacing setting).
Lot’s of solutions, Linux does word processing just fine, but it doesn’t sound like he wants anything to do with it.
I think the modern, hep, go-jiggidy way all the kids do it is if you go on CraigsList to find someone to type it for him.
Depending on how many pages it is it may be cheaper then buying a new computer. However, if he writes a new book or needs revisions, that’s always another expense.
Has it occurred to him that publishing a novel will certainly attract THEIR attention?
Most publishers these days want a digital copy; very few want a paper manuscript. Of course, I could scan it for him – but that’s a load of work!
I think this may be the best approach available. Also, as noted, it can be really cheap, too!
He erased a lot… (It makes me think of “Confederacy of Dunces.”)
Grin! Seems obvious, doesn’t it? He lives “off the grid” as much as he can…and then he goes and makes a giant bid for attention. But when the muse inspires, it’s hard to resist.
Thank you all and all and all for your advice! I figure I’ll buy him a beat-up used machine from Ebay, making sure it already has an OP and something that’ll do Word Processing. If necessary, I’ll connect to my ISP and pull down what’s needed.
I continue to be really impressed at the depth of knowledge here on the SDMB. Thank you again!
Hmmm, do you have a cite for that? It is a murky and somewhat controversial thing. It all has to do with what is in the EULA. I believe there is no problem with Apple, but Microsoft is different - I looked at several forums specifically discussing this issue and they all seemed to have relatively the same conclusion but I can’t say I’m 100% certain what is legal and not. It would be an interesting topic for discussion but its kind of off topic for this thread to go back and forth about the legalize of Microsofts EULA.