You’ve just spent hours on creating your whimsical, fantastical masterpiece. But now what? If you want to start writing a book, you might be wondering how to get your book out there, and who can help you self-publish it. Well, here’s good news for book enthusiasts! You can create an eBook without having to spend hundreds of dollars on book writing software (also known as book writing app).
Do you want to learn about free novel writing software? Maybe you’re a beginner and you want to download Best Free Novel Writing Software. Or, perhaps you’re researching about book writing software and you want to know more about it. You may even need to write a survival novel like for school for free online. No matter what the reason, we got something for you!
Manuskript:
Manuskript is a feature-rich book writing tool.
It has an outliner, word count, and distraction-free mode. It also a novel assistant to help you. With it, you can develop characters using the snowflake method.
You can also keep track of notes about your characters, the plot, events, and places in your story.
These tools will certainly help improve your writing.
It is well worth a try for a new author.
yWriter:
I have to start with yWriter because it was developed by a writer, Simon Haynes.
He explains the reason for going to all the trouble to create this software, and it should resonate with many writers.
“I really struggled with my first novel. I wrote slabs of text into a big word processor file, and I just couldn’t make sense of the whole thing at once. No real overview, no easy jumping from scene to scene, nothing.”
It is a great explanation of why word processors are not designed for writing fiction.
The key feature of yWriter is that it breaks book writing into chapters and scenes. When writing a book, this is a must-have feature.
It also comes with the ability to build characters and locations.
Google Docs (Word Processing):
While Scrivener is the best book writing software, once you get to editing and getting feedback, it begins to fall short.
That’s why Google Docs has become my second go-to piece of book writing software. It’s free, very easy to use, and requires no backups since everything is in the cloud.
Best of all are its collaboration abilities, which allow you to invite your editor to the document and then watch as they make changes, which are tracked in suggestion mode, and leave comments on your story (see screenshot below).
Pros of Google Docs:
- Real-time collaboration with editors, beta readers, or other writers
- Suggestion mode
- Free!
Cons of Google Docs:
- No large-document organization features
- No productivity features
- Offline mode withstanding, usually requires an internet connection
Cost: Free!
Vellum (Book Formatting/Word Processing):
If you want to turn your book into an eBook, it’s not that hard. Scrivener, Word, Pages, they all can format eBooks and print books. But that doesn’t mean they’ll look good.
In fact, it takes a lot of skill and effort to format a printed book that looks good on any of those word processors. That’s why I love Vellum so much.
Vellum makes beautiful books.
The most important part of this is the previewer (see the image below), which lets you see how each formatting change or book edit you make will appear on Kindle, Fire, iPhone, Nook, and other eReaders.
Vellum picks up where Scrivener, Word, and Pages leave off, giving you a tool to make great looking eBooks and print books, usually in under an hour.
It also has stripped-down, option-based formatting, which is perfect for designing both eBooks and print books.
Pros of Vellum:
- Easy and intuitive
- Format a manuscript for print and ebook in less than an hour
- Beautiful styling
Cons of Vellum:
- Limited styles
- Relatively expensive
Cost: $199 for eBook generation; $249 for paperback formatting
Trello:
Trello is a drag-and-drop style organization tool based on the Kanban system. Kanban involves writing tasks on cards and then moving them between lists according to how close they are to being complete.
Here’s what that looks like in Trello:
With a Trello board, you can add ideas, plot points, articles, and to-dos to cards to help you visualize your writing process, story outline, content workflow, and more.
Potential uses:
- As a writing planning tool: move blog post ideas or author tasks across the board from to-do to done as you work on them
- As an outlining tool: Create columns for your character, setting and research info, and movable cards to help you plot your novel
Price: Free
Best for: Planners who like a bird’s-eye view and want the freedom to move things around.
Evernote:
If you liked the text-editor based interface offered by Simplenote, but want a few more planning, organization, writing, and formatting tools, Evernote has you covered.
You can do just about everything in Evernote, from creating to-do lists and checklists to drawing out specific notes to capturing receipts for tracking business expenses.
Evernote offers up to 60 MB of space on its free plan, which is plenty if you’re just using plain text notes. If you’d like to add more graphic or larger files, you can upgrade your storage for small fees.
Price: Free
Best for: Writers who want to plan in a variety of styles in different document types.
Plottr:
Plottr is another great tool for visual planners. You start by creating a timeline for your novel, which is then used to automatically generate a linear outline that you can begin to flesh out.
There are screens for character creation and profiling, space for your setting and world-building notes, and a tagging system to keep everything organized.
You can export your outline directly to Word or Scrivener when you’re ready to start writing, and if you’re writing a series, you can link the timelines together in Plottr to maintain continuity.
Price: $25/year for one license (one device) – $65/year for five licenses (use on 5 devices). Get a 30 day free trial here.
Best for: Visual, linear planners.
Publisher Rocket (Book Marketing App):
How do you know if your book will sell? Wouldn’t it be nice to know if there is a market for your book before you start writing? How do you find the most readers on Amazon for your published book?
For all of these questions, Publisher Rocket has an answer.
Read our full Publisher Rocket review here.
Publisher Rocket a book marketing research tool that helps you understand what readers actually want and how to connect with them with your books. Here are some things you can discover in Publisher Rocket:
- What phrases Amazon buyers are actually searching for.
- The psychology of how readers choose to buy books.
- How much money readers are spending on certain niches and topics.
- How much money specific books are making per month (for example, books that might be competing with yours).
FocusWriter:
FocusWriter minimizes your work into a clean, distraction-free word processor interface, so you can simply write without worrying about the clutter on your computer screen.
This program is nowhere near as comprehensive as Word when it comes to word processing, but if you’re just looking to put words on the page and worry about formatting later, this could be for you.
FocusWriter features include:
- Clean, no-fuss writing interface
- Daily goal setting
- Writing session timers
- Basic spellcheck
- Adjustable display (so you can create your own dark mode if desired)
Price: Free
Best for: Writers looking for a slightly more advanced notes app to get them started with their writing.
Conclusion:
We all want to write a book, but before writing one you need to plan your work. You need to decide on your schedule and know which resources you will use. Everything starts with idea, so you need to come up with the idea first. Everything starts with planning, so if you want to learn about book writing app then stay here and read my article dedicated entirely to this issue.