PDF

The digital age has brought us a more efficient process of communicating literary assets.  To date, this often means that writers submit their manuscripts and screenplays online via PDF. 

If you’re writing on a Mac that has Tiger or Leopard OS, and you’re creating your brilliant masterpiece inside of Word, Pages or a simple text editor; you have PDF conversion tools built right into your operating system.  If you’re using Vista, there is a free plug-in that will allow you to “print” to PDF just like Mac. However, if you’re using a later version of Windows such as XP or Linux and you’re using Microsoft Word or some other text editor to create your masterpiece, you will need PDF conversion software. 

Print to PDF??? I thought I was creating a .pdf file?  I know this is confusing to some folk so allow me to clarify.  When you are prompted to “print to PDF”, essentially what you are doing is creating a “printed” copy of the document in .pdf format and saving it to your hard drive.  So the document doesn’t forward to your printer spool and come out your printer.  You’re creating a .pdf “print” of your original document. 

Does my writing software already have PDF conversion capabilities?  Possibly. The latest versions of screenwriting programs such as Movie Magic, Final Draft and Montage already come equipped with PDF printing tools.  So there’s no need to purchase additional software.

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One of the best gadgets we came across at the Society for Information Display (SID) 2008 conference was the Readius. The Readius is described as "eReading comfort in a mobile phone". Its form factor has a lot of great potential for screenplays, manuscripts and mobile content in general. To date Polymer Vision, the creator of the Readius, is focused on being “The Rollable Display Company”.  Their latest product, Readius gives you a cell phone, RSS Feeds, Podcasts, eBooks, Music, News and email literally all “rolled up in one” single device.  Industry professionals who have a 300-page manuscript to read on a flight from NY to LA but don’t want to be bothered with their computer or worst yet, a paperbound submission can whip out the Readius which also allows for the importing of PDF documents.

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