The Best Writing Software for Novelists
Writing by hand is romantic, and typing on an Olivetti Letters 32 is more romantic still. But when it comes to writing, romance will only take you so far. But Here are some of my favorite writing and publishing tools, all of which I have purchased and used regularly. This list includes software for outlining, editing, formatting books, and selling on Kindle.
As of this writing, most of these are still heavily discounted for Cyber week.
Best Software for Outlining Your Novel: Plottr
The sole function of Plottr is to help you outline your book, a function it performs incredibly well. It includes built-in templates for a number of different structures, including the 24-chapter plot outline, the 12-step mystery formula, the eight sequence formula, and more.
Keep in mind these are not structures that you should know by heart, or at all! I've never used any kind of outline to write a novel. However, I'm trying Plottr this year because I want to see if the 24-chapter plot outline can help me organize my thoughts. You can see a demo of how the templates work on the Plottr website.
Best Software for Editing Your Novel: Autocrit
Autocrit isn't a writing program but rather an editing program. You paste your story or novel into Autocrit, and it analyzes the document for all sorts of things: overused words, passive voice, and repetition, among other factors. You can then go through the document line by line addressing all of the issues Autocrit raises. When I plugged in one of my published novels, it was fascinating to see what words I tend to overuse.
One of the more interesting things about Autocrit is that you can select your genre, and the program will compare your book to bestsellers in that field and size your manuscript up for pacing and momentum.
Autocrit is helpful if you want to submit a much cleaner, more streamlined manuscript.
You can get a lifetime or monthly membership here. I cancelled it for a while in 2023 while I waited for clarity on AI, and finally purchased a lifetime subscription late last year after AutoCrit added clear language to its website saying that manuscripts uploaded by users will never be used to train AI.
Best Software for Formatting Print and Ebooks: Vellum
Vellum is pretty much perfect. When I first started publishing books through my micro press, Fiction Attic Press, the process of formatting involved complicated html and laborious conversion from Word to epub. Fortunately, the time-intensive process is a relic of the past. All you need to create gorgeous, professional ebooks and paperbacks is one super-simple, user-friendly piece of software: Vellum. I’ve used other programs, including the now-defunct Atavist, as well as the more user-friendly Reedsy. Back in the day, I even used the clunky, maddeningly glitchy KDP interface to create Kindle books.
Vellum is hands-down the best, simplest, most intuitive book creation software available. I use it for every book I publish through Fiction Attic Press, including the workbooks for writers series.
To create a book with Vellum, you simply import a Word file, copy-and-paste text from any word processor, or type directly into Vellum. You instantly see a professional-looking page of text. By clicking the “styles” button, you can see how the book looks in several different templates. It automatically generates a table of contents, and you can download your file for ePub, mobi (Kindle), or print (PDF). This software has saved me hundreds of hours, and it always creates a beautiful book.
Best Software for Marketing and Selling Kindle Books: Publisher Rocket
Publisher Rocket is all about research and keywords. It helps you figure out what keywords to use with your book to reach the most readers on Kindle, what your competition is, which categories can get the most eyes on your books, and how to create ads and copy that sells.
Amazon has more than 11,000 book categories, but finding them is like sifting through a haystack. Publisher Rocket finds the categories for you. I don’t recommend Publisher Rocket for traditionally published authors, because your publisher likely handles the metadata for your books. However, for self-published authors, it’s an excellent tool.
Back to the Basics: Word is Still Great for Writing
Word is an excellent, basic tool, especially if you like to keep all of your writing in a single document and just pick up where you left off each day. If you're using Word, I recommend keeping one folder with your novel title, one master document in which you write your novel, and one document titled "Notes" in which you keep notes to yourself throughout the process. Word is really all you need to write a novel.
Writing by hand still works!
I still write by hand sometimes. Once I'm deep into a novel, I do everything on the computer, but in the early stages I often take notes and write fragments by hand. When you manually transcribe your handwriting into your computer, you will probably find yourself adding, subtracting, and editing.
This article includes affiliate links. I have personally purchased and used all of the software on this list and am happy to recommend it.