Writing a book is hard. I’ve written seven books as well as some true point during each one I experienced the idea, “There has to be a tool, an item of book writing software, that would make this easier.”
Bad news/good news: writing a novel can be hard, and also the best piece of writing software in the world won’t write your book for you personally. But the news that is good there is book writing software that may make the process a little easier.
In this article, we are going to cover the ten best items of software for writing a book and appear in the pros and cons of every.
Worst Pieces of Software for Writing a novel
First, though, let’s cover software you need to avoid, at the least while you’re writing a book:
- Game Titles. Especially World of Warcraft (always always always!) but also Solitaire, Sudoku, Angry Birds, and, for me personally at this time, Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes.
- Facebook, Twitter, as well as other Social Media Marketing Software. Do I really want to say more? Fortunately there’s an item of book writing software for avoiding this very distracting software (see Freedom below).
- Other Productive Software In A Roundabout Way Connected With Your Writing. Yes, it’s good to reconcile your money on Quickbooks or be sure you’re up to date on your own calendar app, but responsible, well-meaning work could easily be a justification for a quick distraction that turns into a major distraction from writing your book.
Set aside time for your writing every day and then stay focused!
If you want a casino game, make writing your word that is daily count game.
If you would like more “likes” on social media, imagine how great getting five-star reviews on your book will likely to be.
If you want to look at your bank balance many times a day, considercarefully what your bank balance will undoubtedly be when you stop checking it constantly, finish your book, and turn an effective author.
No piece of writing software will write your book for your needs, however these ten may help. Let’s look in the benefits and drawbacks of each and every.
Google Sheets (Spreadsheet)
Me when I was first trying to become a writer that one of my most-used tools in my book writing software toolkit would be a spreadsheet, I would have told you I didn’t major in English to have to use a spreadsheet if you’d told.
The good news is, as I’m finishing my seventh book, I realize that I’m using spreadsheets almost daily.
Spreadsheets permit you to get a sense of sun and rain of your book at a glance, so when you’re working on a 300-page document, distilling it down seriously to useable information becomes very necessary.
You might use spreadsheets for:
Google Sheets find more information is perfect for this because it’s free and you can quickly share your write-ups along with your writing partners, editors, or beta readers to get feedback. Microsoft Excel is yet another great option, but for writers, I suggest Google Sheets.
Cost: Free!
Scrivener (Word Processor)
Scrivener is the book writing software that is premier. It really is produced by writers for writers. Scrivener’s “binder” view enables you to break up your book into chapters and sections and easily reorganize it. Project targets allow you to create word count goals and then track your progress daily. Its composition mode can help you stay focused by detatching all of the clutter. Plus, you are allowed by it to format for publishing (e.g. on Amazon or Barnes & Noble).
There are problems with Scrivener. Formatting is more complex as you bring on an editor than it needs to be and collaborating isn’t easy, meaning it loses its effectiveness as soon. Nonetheless it more than makes up for that by being so useful in the early stages regarding the writing process.
In reality, we have confidence in Scrivener so much, we published a book about how exactly writers that are creative write more, faster deploying it. It’s called Scrivener Superpowers. For your creative writing, you can get Scrivener Superpowers here if you’re using Scrivener or want to save yourself time as you learn how to use it. The next edition comes out on Tuesday!
Cost: $45 for Mac, $40 for Windows
How to locate it: get started doing Scrivener for Mac here or with Scrivener for Windows here
You could get a copy of Scrivener here, or learn more about how to utilize the software with your resources:
Freedom (Productivity App)
One question writers always ask me is, “How may I stay focused enough to complete what I write?”
I have too thoughts that are many this because of this article, but so far as writing software to encourage focus, I recommend Freedom.
Freedom allows you to block your biggest distractions online, including both websites and apps that are mobile for a group period of time. So when you mindlessly escape your book to scroll through Facebook, you’ll get the site load that is won’t.
You may also schedule recurring sessions, so that at a time that is schedulede.g. Mondays from 6 am to 10 am), you won’t manage to access web sites on the blocklist, even if you try.
There are some other apps like this that we’ve written about before, notably Self-Control for Mac and StayFocused for Windows. But Freedom goes further, letting you block sites on both your pc and your phone, and enabling recurring sessions.
Cost: $29 / for Pro version, which I use and recommend (Free trial available year)
Google Docs (Word Processor)
While Scrivener may be the book writing software that is best, once you get to editing and getting feedback, it starts to fall short.
That’s why Google Docs is actually my second go-to bit of book writing software. It’s free, quite simple to utilize, and requires no backups since everything is into the cloud.
Best of all are its collaboration abilities, which allow you to invite your editor towards the document and then watch she makes changes, tracked in suggestion mode, and leave comments on your story (see screenshot below) as he or.
Cost: Free!
Vellum (Book Formatting/Word Processor)
If you want to turn your book into an eBook, it is not too hard. Scrivener, Word, Pages, each of them will make eBooks. But that doesn’t mean they’ll look good. In fact, it will require a lot of skill and energy to make an eBook look good on some of those word processors. That’s why Everyone loves Vellum so much.
Vellum makes eBooks that are beautiful.
Vellum picks up where Scrivener, Word, and Pages leave off, giving you a tool to make great looking eBooks each time.
The most important part of this is basically the previewer (start to see the image below), which lets you observe how each change that is formatting book edit you will be making will show up on Kindle, Fire, iPhone, Nook, and other eReaders.
It also has stripped-down, option-based formatting, which is ideal for designing eBooks.
I really love this app!
UPDATE: Vellum recently expanded into formatting for paperback books! We haven’t tried it yet but it looks awesome!