Saving documents as PDFs has become trivially easy. A huge number of PDF creator apps have emerged, most of them free, and almost all of them quite simple to use. Programs like Word 2007 and OpenOffice.org have “save as PDF” built in (you need an add-on from Microsoft to do this in Word 2007, but it’s part of the normal interface once you install the add-on). Adobe’s Acrobat.com lets you save to PDF from their word processor, Buzzword, and includes a PDF converter that will transform any document you upload to PDF.

What if you want to go the other way, though? That is, what if you want to get the text back out of a PDF so you can edit it in your normal word processor? This is quite a bit harder than creating a PDF — strange things happen to the original text when you create a PDF that make it quite difficult to pull the text and, especially, the formatting out.

Enter PDFtoWord, a free web-based service that has just begun offering its services publicly. PDFtoWord is simple — you select a PDF file on your harddrive, select whether you want the output to be a Word (.doc) file or a Rich Text Format (.rtf) file, enter your email address, and click “convert”. Within an hour or so (like I said, this kind of conversion is difficult!), PDFtoWord emails you the output of the process — a very nicely formatted and ready-to-edit word processor file.

I tried it with a copy of my e-book for students, Don’t Be Stupid, a complexly formatted document of about 80 pages, laid out into a dozen chapters and a few appendices. PDFtoWord preserved the pagination, the chapter breaks, the text formatting (though not the styles used), and every line of white space — the document I got back looked remarkably similar to the document I’d sent, far exceeding my expectations. The missing elements are things I couldn’t imagine there being a way to preserve, like the styles — I don’t know how the program could guess that all large bold text aligned right should be “Heading 3″.

So what I’m saying is that as a free service, PDFtoWord performs admirably — even better than some paid programs I’ve tried. PDFtoWord is offered by NitroPDF, which makes several other free, Web-based PDF utilities for creating and even editing PDFs, in addition to their desktop-based paid program NItroPDF Professional, which aims to be a sort of “Acrobat Lite” for creating, manipulating, editing, and combining PDF files.

PDFtoWord (free)

But for the most part, I’ve tried to recommend free or, as much as possible, low-cost software and services — and when possible, open-source software. There are a number of reasons for this, which add up to something like a philosophy:

1. Writers, especially beginning writers, often can’t afford expensive software. There are programs out there that promise to help you write better, faster, and clearer copy — for a price. And it’s usually a high price — some of these packages run over $200 US! If you’re just getting started, it might be months (or even longer) before you see any financial return, let alone enough to make back the cost of these programs. Why spend so much when there are plenty of free programs that do the job as well?
2. A lot of software for writers seems “scammy”. Writing isn’t easy; good writing even less so. I’m deeply suspicious of software that promises to make writing a novel or screenplay easier. Organizing notes, handling formatting, etc — these are things I expect software to do well, not make writing easy.
3. Open source software is free in more than just cost. There’s a saying in the open source/free software world: “Free as in speech”. Writers above all people have a responsibility to support efforts to protect freedom of speech (and the most to gain from those efforts), including the freedoms that are embodied in open source software — to look at and modify the code. Even if you can’t modify your software, there are programmers who can, and open source software gives them the freedom to do so. (Actually, I’d like to find more open source software specifically for writers, so if you know of anything, drop me a line.)
4. Free tools are often as good or even better than their paid alternatives. If there’s a paid program that’s really the best for its purpose, I’ll recommend it. But where free programs do the job as well, I see the cost of the paid alternative as unwarranted.
5. I can’t afford it. I’ve written largely about products I use, or would use, and cost is a factor in whether I decide to use something. I can’t afford a hundred or more dollars to evaluate a program — and even less to evaluate all the programs available for writers.
6. I don’t do the kinds of writing a program supports. For example, since I’m not a screenwriter, it’s hard for me to be fair in evaluating a program intended for screenwriters. When hundreds of dollars are on the line, it’s even harder.

There are programs that are worth the money, and I cover them when I can. There are also programs that are industry standards, like FinalDraft A/V for screenwriting. My feeling is that if you’re at the stage in your career where you need to use FinalDraft, you’re probably pretty comfortable with the technical aspects of the software — and you can probably afford (and probably need) the support material (books, classes, etc.) you need to use the software. A blog post probably isn’t going to cut it for you.

All that said, if there’s paid software that people really need to know about, let me know. Most paid software offers evaluations, and the 30 days or so they let you us the software for free is enough time to figure out most of the basics. I can also try to get a review copy from companies that don’t offer demos, though that’s a hit-or-miss prospect.

Finally, I’d be happy to post your reviews, if you want. If there’s a piece of software that you’d like to see get some attention, write a short review and I’ll consider posting it to the site (and I’ll give you credit). The ultimate goal is to help writers find out about technology that can help them, so if there’s something I’m missing that would help you or your fellow writers, I’m more than willing to figure out how to add that to the site.