Writing a book is hard. I’ve written seven books and at some true point during every one I experienced the idea, “There has got to be a tool, a piece of book writing software, that will get this to easier.”

Bad news/good news: writing a novel will be hard, and the best piece of writing software on earth won’t write your book for you personally. Nevertheless the news that is good there is book writing software that may result in the process a little easier.

In this article, we’re going to cover the ten best pieces of software for writing a book and look at the benefits and drawbacks of each and every.

Worst items of Software for Writing a Book

First, though, let’s cover software you really need to avoid, at the very least while you’re writing a novel:

1. Video Gaming. Especially realm of Warcraft (always always always!) but also Solitaire, Sudoku, Angry Birds, and, in my situation at this time, Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes.
2. Facebook, Twitter, and Other Social Media Marketing Software. Do i truly want to say more? Fortunately there’s a bit of book writing software for avoiding this very distracting software (see Freedom below).
3. Other Productive Software Not Directly Associated With Your Writing. Yes, it’s good to reconcile your bank account on Quickbooks or be sure you’re up to date on your own calendar app, but responsible, well-meaning work could easily be a reason for a quick distraction that turns into an important distraction from writing your book.

Set aside time for the writing every and then stay focused day!

If you’d like a game title, make writing your daily word count your game.

If you need more “likes” on social media marketing, imagine how great getting five-star reviews on your book will soon be.

You stop checking it constantly, finish your book, and become a successful author if you need to check your bank balance several times a day, think about what your bank balance will be when.

No written piece software will write your book for you personally, however these ten may help. Let’s look at the advantages and disadvantages 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.

However now, as I’m finishing my seventh book, I realize that I’m using spreadsheets almost daily.

Spreadsheets enable you to get a feeling of the current weather of your book at a glance, so when you’re taking care of a 300-page document, distilling it down to useable information becomes very necessary.

You might use spreadsheets for:

Google Sheets is ideal for this since it’s free and you will quickly share your write-ups together with your writing partners, editors, or beta readers to get feedback. Microsoft Excel is yet another option that is great but for writers, i will 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 lets you break your book up into chapters and sections and easily reorganize it. Project targets let you create word count goals and then track your progress daily. Its composition mode can help you stay focused by detatching all the clutter. Plus, it permits you to format for publishing (e.g. on Amazon or Barnes & Noble).

There are many nagging issues with Scrivener. Formatting is more complicated than it needs to be and collaborating isn’t easy, meaning it loses its effectiveness when you bring about an editor. Nonetheless it a lot more than makes up for that by being so helpful in the first stages of this writing process.

In reality, we have confidence in Scrivener so much, we published a book exactly how creative writers can 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 edition that go to site is next 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 will get a copy of Scrivener here, or find out more about how exactly to utilize the software with one of these resources:

Freedom (Productivity App)

One question writers always ask me is,“How can I enough stay focused to finish the thing 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 enables you to block your biggest distractions online, including both websites and mobile apps, for a collection time period. So when you mindlessly escape your book to scroll through Facebook, you’ll get the site won’t load.

You can schedule recurring sessions, so that at a scheduled time (e.g. Mondays from 6 am to 10 am), you won’t manage to access the websites on your own blocklist, even although you try.

There are other apps similar to this that we’ve written about before, notably Self-Control for Mac and StayFocused for Windows. But Freedom goes further, enabling you to block sites on both your computer or laptop and your phone, and enabling sessions that are recurring.

Cost: $29 / year for Pro version, that we use and recommend (free trial offer available)

Google Docs (Word Processor)

While Scrivener is the book writing software that is best, once you get to editing and having feedback, it begins to fall short.

That’s why Google Docs is actually my second go-to little bit of book writing software. It’s free, quite easy to make use of, and requires no backups since all things are when you look at the cloud.

Best of all are its collaboration abilities, which permit you to invite your editor into the document and then watch as he or she makes changes, tracked in suggestion mode, and then leave comments on the story (see screenshot below).

Cost: Free!

Vellum (Book Formatting/Word Processor)

It’s not that hard if you want to turn your book into an eBook. Scrivener, Word, Pages, each of them could make eBooks. But that doesn’t mean they’ll look good. In fact, it takes a complete lot of skill and effort to create an eBook look good on some of those word processors. That’s why I adore Vellum a great deal.

Vellum makes beautiful eBooks.

Vellum picks up where Scrivener, Word, and Pages leave off, giving you a tool which will make great looking eBooks each and every time.

The most crucial part of here is the previewer (see the image below), which allows you to see how each formatting change or book edit you make can look on Kindle, Fire, iPhone, Nook, along with other eReaders.

In addition has stripped-down, option-based formatting, which will be ideal for designing eBooks.

I really love this app!

UPDATE: Vellum recently expanded into formatting for paperback books! I haven’t tried it yet but it looks awesome!