I’ve installed and played around with Sophie for a few days now. It’s an Alpha release, so expect bugs and crashes and weird little things to pop up.

The current Sophie user interface is clunky, to say the least – objects dragged about don’t feel snappy, and there are no help files built into the software. There is no right click functionality anywhere. To make things worse, the only documentation I’ve found is a Quicktime movie over at the Sophie project page, and while it may cover all the basics for writing a Sophie eBook it isn’t enough.

The project site is a minor drawback on its own – it is hard to navigate and is a complete pain when you’re trying to find information about the software. A quick peek around tells me the site is running on Drupal, though I may be mistaken.

Perhaps a wiki will help, in due time.

I’m not exactly sure how Sophie will be accepted by the global eBook publishing community, and from what I see it looks like a glorified cross-platform version of Powerpoint. With comments, streaming and web integration.

But apart from all the Alpha hiccups (we must give it time to grow), Sophie has all the basics in place. Videos, music, pictures and good typography support are built in, as well as integration with servers. The inclusion of a Timeline feature is slightly perplexing to me – books are meant to be browsed at your own pace, are they not? – but overall it looks very promising.

I’ll see if I can help out with documentation – Sophie has a lot of potential; let’s hope it starts taking off in a year or two.

Download Sophie here.

Remember FictionPress? The site where authors post up their writing, and other authors get to comment on the various works put up?

I personally don’t like FictionPress. Or FanFiction.net, for that matter. You don’t get to choose the fonts and font sizes your fiction is presented in, nor decide the environment in which a reader interacts with your words. There you just post fiction and pray that others start taking an interest in what you write. No upward climb towards being published, though some may argue it is a good way to improve your writing.

Urbis, which is basically a polished spin on FictionPress’s idea, does seem to do a few things right. It feels like your typical Web 2.0 service – shiny, polished and well presented. And there is a focused approach to writing – a goals section makes sure you work towards something, while making it easy to socialise with those who are working towards the same goal.

The Be Published goal had 1005 items at the time this post was being written.

Urbis also has a credit system, used as a way to encourage reviews of other people’s work. The underlying concept is easy enough to understand: you earn credits by reviewing other people’s works, and you spend them by revealing reviews other people have written about yours. It’s quite a brilliant move, frankly speaking – it makes sure people don’t hog the duvet and selfishly stick to their own writing.