I’ve been using Papyrus Author every day, four to five hours a day, for many years. I switched from Scrivener a long time ago and have been a loyal user ever since. When Papyrus 12 came out, several friends and acquaintances took my advice and bought it right away.
But today, there is one thing that keeps me from recommending it to anyone. And every week it gets worse.
The one crucial thing missing from Papyrus Author now is any evidence of ongoing development. There are no regular updates, no progress on a roadmap, and bugs that have been reported and verified years ago are not address.
Sam is very responsive and handles tech support quickly and thoroughly. I appreciate that.
I continue to find bugs in version 12. And annoying things that don’t work the way they should. I don’t report them anymore, Sam can’t fix them. He can research them and… what? Pass them on? To… who?
I don’t want to blow my reputation in this community, but gang, if there was a good alternative, I’d switch. I would. And I can’t recommend anyone pay the money for a new Papyrus license when it hasn’t seen an update in twelve months. Since May of last year. V12 came out at the end of Feb’25 and the last update was May’25? Is that right?
I don’t know what else to say. It looks like the community is supported by Sam and others, but every day that goes by Papyrus gets stale.
There are frustrating issues using the Create New Project if you want to use a custom template.
There are times when choosing a cover image puts the image on the wrong book.
There are times when the cursor is not in the place it looks like it is in the editor.
Why do broken links occur?
I can understand if the product isn’t financial viable and doesn’t support bug fix efforts. I’m not saying that is the case. I can’t know. Regardless of good reasons for things being how they are, I can’t recommend new users to Papyrus Author now.
What would it take? Updates. Bug fixes. A developer listening to a user community. Energy put into the tool.
Yeah, we paid a onetime fee. And got basically a onetime effort.
I want to tell my friends they should use Papyrus! I want to quit looking for an alternative because I know Papyrus will still be my best choice year over year. But I can’t without… hope.