[objclxt]

Many authors do already do this. I'm not sure if Charles Stross is complaining about having to write in Word, or simply use a workflow where Word is the end output for the author. The latter makes more sense as a complaint than the former, because I know many published authors (writing runs in the family) who use tools like Scrivener to write and then send it on to their agents / publishers as an exported .doc without any problems.

It could be worse, at least he's not writing scripts (which generally mandate you to use Final Draft)...

[cstross]

Publisher's workflow now insists on copy editors using Word with change tracking to mark up submitted manuscripts. The author then gets a copy of the marked-up MS to check. Which means having to use at least a tool compatible with MS change tracking on .doc files. So I'm blissfully Word-free until I hit "compile" in Scrivener ... but after the output file (RTF) goes to the publisher it comes back to me as a Word document with tracked changes and I have to dive into the turbid depths once more.

[ghaff]

And, honestly, for my last book I did pretty much the same thing even though I wasn't using an actual publisher. I did however have to send my ms to a copy editor and I also--at some point--had to get into some semblance of layout (for which I used Pages; my needs were pretty simple).