This is now significantly more steps than downloading Scrivener.

Unless it's got better Scrivener is pretty awful though - bought it for my first book and gave up, both books I've written were written with other tools

Interesting, I've written two novels and over a dozen radio drama series in Scrivener. Currently using it to finish first draft on a spec film script. It's pretty fantastic. Interested to hear why it didn't work for you - especially if the alternative is word.

Cross platform support (including iPad), saving direct to dropbox, full screen distraction free mode, easy sorting of chapters / scenes, rapid offline export to PDF (unlike say Celtex). Scrivener just blows everything else I've used to write out of the water.

What did you use instead?

One was in asciidoc (the publisher's tool of choice), the other was in pages (only a 10,000 word book)

Working draft for current one is in Ulysses but I’m not feeling it ATM so might switch

They're technical books rather than novels so although I prefer markdown I find it doesn't quite stretch far enough for me

However, since NovelWriter is GPLv3 licensed, they could in theory incorporate code from Pandoc, which is GPLv2 licensed, directly into NovelWriter.

I think you guys are missing the point. The point isn’t “how do we get from markdown to docx” but rather “why doesn’t this tool support the format my publisher expects”. Yes, pandoc is amazing, but the product needs to support exporting to docx for the publisher so that the user of NovelWriter feels supported and empowered to write.

TeaDrunk said it best: it’s now significantly more steps the user shouldn’t have to do.

This is the correct take. If it's so easy to do then there should be a button or menu option that does it.

That’s what I am saying. Integrate Pandoc into NovelWriter so that users can export directly to docx.

You and parent commenter seem to think that you are disagreeing with what I said but we are agreeing.

or just use PanWriter: https://panwriter.com/