Authoring a book—particularly with the goal of self-publishing—is full of steps to take, activities to manage, and problems to solve. It’s an arduous work of love but challenging nonetheless.
However, before researching how to get popular on BookTok, and where to get an ISBN, there is an essential first step to take: writing your book.
It sounds silly and obvious, but it bears repeating: writing is the most crucial part of writing a book, simultaneously the most accessible and challenging. It can be inspiring or full of struggles—most often, both of them.
Luckily, plenty of software tools in the market can give you a helping hand throughout this journey, taking over some aspects of the writing and editing process to help you focus on what matters most: your ideas.
To help you narrow down the list of options, here are some of the most outstanding writing software tools available for writers like you.
Best All-Rounder: Scrivener
Scrivener has the entire writing side of the internet singing lavish praises, and it lives up to its widespread reputation.
Since this software was designed and made by writers for writers, it features most of the options you dream of when you think of writing tools, including but not limited to the ever-useful corkboard mode that allows you to look at every section of your manuscript, the outline feature, a progress tracker, and more.
However, with this abundance of features comes additional complexity since it’s overloaded with menus you may not know how to navigate. To make things more complicated, the interface is not intuitive, which means you may spend lots of time learning how to use the tool rather than writing with it.
But keep in mind that if you get familiar with the software and find it easy to use, you may just have unlocked the ally of a lifetime.
- Price: $59,99.
- Pros: A jack-of-all-trades that helps you channel all aspects of writing into one tool.
- Cons: It can be hard to understand and has a steep learning curve.
Best for Organization: Notion
While many writers struggle with the dreaded writer’s block, lacking writing flow can be just as popular a problem, if not even more pervasive. It usually happens when you find it hard to immerse yourself in your words, work, and ideas, which leads to procrastination.
The best way to solve it is through organization—brainstorming, writing down a plan of action, and setting short-term goals to follow. Luckily, Notion is excellent at tackling those.
Notion is an app meant to help you think. It is a blank space you can customize as you need to write, plan, schedule, track, and think. For this purpose, it has countless features that you can modify as you see fit, and users can upload their templates to share with others—including many meant for writers.
Keep in mind that Notion is a software that requires you to be tech-savvy if you wish to explore its full potential. Nonetheless, its primary functions are easy to understand, even for newcomers.
- Price: Free. Has a premium option for $8/month, billed annually.
- Pros: Endless customizations that can turn your Notion into anything you want.
- Cons: It needs you to be tech-savvy to take advantage of all its features.
Best for Writing: Microsoft Word
While writing has many steps before, during, and after, you cannot write without writing. And to write, you need a reliable writing tool.
Many of the software featured in this list provide space to write to your heart’s content, but none is as perfect as Microsoft Word. It’s not new, fancy, or quirky, but it is precisely what it needs to be: efficient.
It is the default word processor of many writers. Still, its popularity prevails thanks to its inherent versatility. Microsoft Word boasts high user satisfaction, gets the job done with minimal distraction, is intuitive and simplistic, and has all the features you need to write to your heart’s content without becoming tech-savvy overnight.
Best part? You can enhance it with multiple other apps and add-ons, such as Grammarly or SmartEdit for Word, transforming it with one click into an all-encompassing word processor for authors.
- Price: Free with some devices. Otherwise $159,99.
- Pros: Simple and straightforward interface, perfect for less tech-oriented writers.
- Cons: Does not have writer-specific features to aid brainstorming, plot, and other needs.
Best for Grammar and Edition: ProWritingAid
While you can find endless grammar-checker software online, ProWritingAid is an all-encompassing, affordable option for writers.
It is an AI-powered writing assistant that helps the editing process by evaluating the text on multiple levels: grammar, spelling, sentence structure, tone, readability, passive voice, repetitiveness, pacing, and more. While it does not replace the job of a human editor, it is a tremendous first-line support for writers seeking to understand their common mistakes and how to improve them.
Another excellent feature is the ability to customize the style guide, which allows you to set the criteria for the software to consider when evaluating your text. However, while ProWritingAid has a free version, it does not come with all the features and limits the number of characters you can edit.
- Price: It has a free version. The paid version starts at $120 and is billed yearly.
- Pros: You can integrate it into countless word processor apps and other programs.
- Cons: Does not have writer-specific features to aid brainstorming, plot, and other needs.
Best for Formatting: Atticus
Formatting takes the central stage after the writing and main editing are good to go. Despite numerous online guidelines trying to ease the burden, this can be a headache for self-publishing authors unfamiliar with the process, particularly if they want to do it themselves without outsourcing.
Not with Atticus.
With a sleek interface and a simple design, Atticus allows writers to incorporate multiple designs to transform a great book into a beautiful one while providing some organization and collaboration features. While users can customize their books to their hearts’ content, Atticus also incorporates multiple pre-designed themes to reduce their workload.
The quality of the formatting options makes Atticus a viable alternative to the ever-popular Vellum—another excellent software that, sadly, remains only available for Mac users.
- Price: $147.
- Pros: A versatile and intuitive formatting software available for all platform users.
- Cons: Despite featuring word processor options, they are somewhat plain.
Best for Productivity: FocusWriter
Although it may not be a literal step to check off in the journey towards publishing your first book, working on productivity is a quintessential part of writing and a skill that will make the entire process a breeze.
Luckily, countless apps and software are dedicated to boosting your productivity and helping you make more efficient use of your time. Out of them all, FocusWriter is the one that is exclusively tailor-made for writers.
With the help of FocusWriter, you can customize your perfect virtual space, free it from any potential distractions, and make it as serene as you prefer. It will be just you and your (virtual) paper, without any other element on the screen.
You can change the background, add some noises, or set some timers, but the app is straightforward and minimalistic—precisely what you need to focus and write.
- Price: Free!
- Pros: A minimalistic, simple, and no-fuss way to focus on writing.
- Cons: Could use more customizable features, such as more background noises.
From your computer to the reader, one software at a time.
Becoming a self-published author is no easy task.
Nonetheless, a near-endless list of software and apps is available to help each step be as smooth and uncomplicated as possible. Tools that were only in the hands of publishing companies are now open to the general public, allowing everyone to get their work read.
Today’s world, so generous in technology and innovation, offers remarkable software tools that help alleviate the challenges associated with any task you may think about, from becoming an indie author or a digital bookworm to opening a bookselling business and making money on books. Enjoy the full variety of best book apps, from book writing and editing software that aids in crafting your ideas into a novel or a non-fiction masterpiece to book clubs on your phone.
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