Writing a book doesn’t just require exceptional writing skills but you need the best book writing software to assist you in the writing process. As the number of authors and new books is on the rise, standing out from the crowd and making an impact as a book author is getting more challenging.
There were more than 45,000 authors and writers in the US at the end of 2019, and that number is growing steadily each year. Don’t forget authors from the other parts of the world. If you are a book writer and planning to write a book, you need to ask yourself: How you can give 100% to your new book to stand out from the crowd?
A simple rule is focusing on your book and its content – and nothing else.
Often, writers have to deal with a lot of other things too such as writing, word processor, note-taking, editing, organizing, etc. These processes take a lot of time and attention. The fact is: You can’t give your book 100% if you’ll be worried about secondary less important stuff.
A book writing software helps you do what you are best at – writing. It simplifies your writing process, keeps you organized, and solves several writing-related challenges. What’s the best book writing software in 2024 that you should go for?
This article covers the major and the top book writing software with their features and pricing details to help you choose the one that’s right for your needs.
1. Squibler
Squibler is one of the best book writing software in 2024 that simplifies the writing and publishing process. It helps you finish your book quickly with its cutting-edge features that keep you organized, focused, and at the top of your writing game.
The best thing about Squibler is its ready-to-use outlines for instant plotting. Choose a book outline from a list of templates and start writing. If you have ever written a book, I’m sure you know how helpful this feature is. Getting your outline ready is half the work as it gives you a sense of accomplishment and direction. Creating outlines isn’t a problem anymore.
You can take notes that help you keep your writing and ideas organized. Take notes, arrange them with tags, and search notes related to any topic with a simple search. This helps you with brainstorming, storyboarding, organizing ideas, character sketching, and several other things.
Squibler Features
The key Squibler features include:
- Squibler has an easy-to-use text editor that anyone can use without any training.
- It has a simple drag-and-drop interface that helps you arrange and organize your book chapters and notes.
- More than 30 book templates to choose from. Templates help you start writing your book quickly with a ready-to-use and customizable outline.
- It has a smart note-taking feature that helps you take notes instantly with a single click.
- Distraction-free writing mode.
- It comes with a word count goal feature that helps you set goals to push yourself.
- Arrange your book elements on the corkboard with the drag and drop feature.
- It has a built-in grammar checking software.
- Squibler works best at helping you publish your book. It formats your book for Kindle automatically and you can preview your book to see how it will look in different formats (e.g. Kindle, PDF, etc.).
- Squibler integrates seamlessly with lead cloud storage services like Google Drive and Dropbox.
- You can use Squibler on multiple devices including Windows, Mac, iPad, and others. You can access your account from any device that helps you write on the go.
Squibler Pricing
If you are assuming that all these amazing writer-friendly features will cost you a lot of money, rest assured, Squibler is very cost-effective. You can try it absolutely free for 14 days. It only costs $9.99 per month after the free trial.
Not expensive, right?
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2. Google Docs
Google Docs is a decent book writing software that you can access from any internet-enabled device. Google Docs is a simple online word processor that lets you write, organize, and manage your book easily. The best thing about using Google Docs as your book writing app is that it is exceptionally great at collaboration. If you are working in a team and different authors are writing various book chapters, Google Docs will make collaboration and communication a whole lot easier.
However, it isn’t a specialized book writing software and, therefore, lacks basic features and tools like formatting, book outlining, corkboard, etc.
Google Docs Features
Here is an overview of the major Google Docs features that make it a decent choice for book writers:
- An easy-to-use online word processor that’s a completely web-based application.
- You can access it from any device (e.g. Windows, Mac, smartphones, iPad, etc.).
- Your book and the content are stored in Google Drive – the cloud storage service by Google.
- It has a nice document recovery feature that lets you recover the previous version of your book.
- Google Docs has a powerful collaboration feature allowing multiple writers and editors to work on a single book simultaneously.
- It offers you all the features that you’ll find in any word processor.
Google Docs Pricing
Google Docs is free to use, and this makes it an ideal choice for writers that need a free, flexible, and collaborative book writing tool. You also get free 15 GB storage with the free account on Google Drive. This is more than enough for any writer.
3. Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word happens to be the most used and popular word processor. You can use it as your book writing app as it offers you everything you need to write an amazing book. It is a simple, popular, and feature-rich word processor that comes as a default writing tool in Microsoft Windows.
You can write any type of book in Word effortlessly. It provides a lot of features that help you manage and organize your book. For example, you can create headings and subheadings, add comments, references, table of content, citations, etc. You can add third-party tool extensions easily in the Word (e.g. Grammarly Word extension). It doesn’t offer templates, book outlines, corkboards, or other special features for book writers though.
Microsoft Word Features
Here are the key Microsoft Word features that you’ll love as a book author:
- Extremely user-friendly and easy-to-use.
- Sleek design with a simple user interface.
- It is one of the most used word processors, so it has a high acceptability rate. Sharing a word document between colleagues and with other tools won’t be an issue.
- Works on computer, laptop, android, iOS, and web. The web application can be accessed from any internet-enabled device.
- You can find free and premium book templates and outlines on the internet.
- Third-party integration isn’t an issue at all.
- Easy organization chapters, sections, and different parts of your book.
- It has a distraction-free mode called focus that covers the full screen and hides everything making it easier to focus on your book.
Microsoft Word Pricing
Microsoft Word isn’t free and is part of Microsoft Office 365. You can’t purchase it as a standalone product rather you’ll have to purchase the full Microsoft Office suite. The starting price is $6.99 per month for personal use that comes with 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage space.
The Office Home and Student suite is priced at $149.99 one-time purchase. It works for a single computer and gives you access to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint only. If you are just starting out, go for Office Home.
4. Ulysses
Ulysses is the writing app for Mac users. The problem with Microsoft Word, despite being a great word processor, is that it doesn’t work with Mac. Even if you try using it on Mac, you might experience bugs and errors. Ulysses is the best book writing software for authors who use Mac, iPad, or iPhone.
Ulysses is an easy-to-use writing app that has a powerful organization section and a distraction-free mode. While it isn’t specifically created for book authors, but it has some nice features that support authors such as writing goals and distraction-free mode. It is focused on increasing your productivity with its clean and straightforward interface. However, Ulysses doesn’t offer you outlines, templates, corkboard, or note-taking features.
Ulysses Features
Here is an overview of the leading Ulysses features and benefits:
- A clean and tidy interface that helps you focus on nothing but writing.
- It has a distraction-free writing mode that makes it easier to write your book quickly.
- You can use it completely via your keyboard without touching the mouse or keypad.
- It has a library that saves all your content that can be retrieved at any time.
- Organize your book into sections and subsections with hierarchic groups.
- Set writing goals based on the daily word count limit or any other deadline. It is a nice feature to keep you motivated.
- It supports multiple file formats including PDF and ePub.
- It integrates with iCloud, iPhone, iPad, and Dropbox making your book accessible across devices.
Ulysses Pricing
Ulysses comes with a monthly subscription with a starting price of $5.99 per month. However, you can try it free for 14 days. The annual subscription is priced at $49.99 per year.
5. Scrivener
Just like Squibler, Scrivener is a book writing software for writers. It isn’t a traditional word processor like Word or Ulysses. Scrivener provides you with features that help you write your book conveniently without any delays.
Scrivener has a flexible dashboard that you can customize as per need. One of the best things is its corkboard that lets you plan your book and move sections by moving cards. Organizing your book and creating and managing the outline is simplified by Scrivener’s outliner. You can access and manage complete chapter and book sections via outline. The full-screen mode is a perfect solution to avoid distractions while writing.
Scrivener doesn’t offer you any drag-and-drop editor like Squibler and this is one of the best features for any book writer. Unfortunately, it is missing here.
Scrivener Features
Here is a list of the major features offered by Scrivener:
- A book writing software with a simple and clean user-interface.
- It has an easy-to-use corkboard that simplifies notetaking and organizing your book.
- It helps you divide your book into different sections, and you can work on individual book sections instead of working on the complete book.
- You can arrange and manage book sections with the help of the Outliner feature that shows you a brief overview of the section. No need to open and check a book section to see what it contains.
- You can create and save your book writing templates based on your preferences.
- It has a distraction-free writing mode to supercharge your writing process.
- You can set writing goals and targets easily.
- It supports a wide range of documents and formats including PDF, Word, RTF, LaTeX, Amazon, etc.
- Snapshot is a nice feature that helps you retrieve older versions of your book without messing around.
- Your work is auto saved and is backed up regularly.
- It works for Windows, Mac, and iOS and you can access your account from multiple devices.
Scrivener Pricing
Scrivener price depends on your operating system. The good news is that it isn’t a subscription-based booking writing tool meaning it comes with a lifetime license with a one-time payment. The price for Windows and Mac versions is $49 each. If you want it for iOS, it will cost you $19.99. You can purchase its bundle for both Mac and Windows for $80 (this includes two licenses one each for Windows and Mac).
More Book Writing Software
The book writing software covered above are the best ones in terms of their features and price. However, there are many other book writing apps and tools in the market that are used by authors and writers a lot.
Here is a list of other book writing tools that will assist you in writing and finishing your book:
- Hemingway App for desktop that helps you write reader-friendly and grammatically correct content for your book. ($19.99 one-time price)
- Vellum is a book writing tool for Mac. (Starting price is $199.99 per license)
- ProWritingAid is a leading grammar checker and style editor that improves your writing by correcting common as well as advanced writing errors. ($20 per month)
- Grammarly is a leading grammar checking tool for book writers. It improves your book with its AI-powered writing assistant that fixes writing errors. (Comes with a free plan, premium plan starts at $11.66 per month)
- Evernote is a note-taking app that works best for book writers. You can organize your book sections, take notes, share notes, create templates, save and manage resources, and do a lot more with Evernote. (Free to use the basic plan, premium plan starts at $7.99 per month)
Choose the Right Book Writing Software for Your Next Bestseller
The right book writing software can make your life easier as a book writer. It keeps you organized, helps you write quickly, and improves your focus. It doesn’t write content for you, but it does make you a better writer and this is the number one reason why you should grab a book writing software now.
The list shared above gives you a complete overview of the features of each writing tool. Choose the one that goes well with your requirements and individual needs – and create a best seller.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here’s a list of answers to some of the most common questions about book writing software:
What is the best software for writing a book?
The best software for writing a book is the one that works for you. The four most popular options are Squibler, Scrivener, Google Docs and Microsoft Word.
Squibler is the best book writing software because it’s designed specifically to help writers write books quickly and easily by providing a full suite of features to support any type of writer working on any kind of story.
Google Docs gets high ratings from both experts in the field as well as amateurs who have never used book writing software before because it’s so easy to use and has all the basic functions needed for document creation such as word processing, spreadsheets, presentations etc., but lacks more advanced features like book formatting or multimedia insertion which can be found in other packages, including Microsoft Word.
What is the best free software for writing a book?
The best free book writing software is on Google Docs because of its ease-of-use and time saving capabilities. For any serious book writer, you should look into a more advanced tool like Squibler.
Can you write a book in Microsoft Word?
You can write a book in Microsoft Word, but you cannot create a book in Microsoft word. In order to do that, you’ll need design tools or a software with more book writing features like Squibler.
