Free software download to write a book

Whether you are a Sci-Fi writer or learning how to publish an eBook writer, Ulysses is an all in one software that allows you to focus on your main business — writing. Getting distracted while writing can hurt the flow of your creative juices pretty bad.

Ulysses comes with a minimalistic interface to help you stay focused and productive. You can choose to switch to typewriter mode. You can attach additional information from images, pdf, keywords, notes, and anything in between. Instead of having to copy and paste all of your text from your writing software into a website, you can simply publish directly to the site. This is especially helpful for authors that blog. No more complicated conversion processes to be done outside of the book writing software!

Note : Ulysses is only available on Apple products at the time of writing this. Have you heard of Hemingway App yet? If you have, then chances are you know either love it or hate it. As the name suggests, Hemingway is a word processing app that is simple and easy to use, but is very visual.

Related: Hemingway App Review. Almost every modern book writer out there regardless of the genre swears by this powerful book writing software. And this is likely because Scrivener was specifically designed for writers. The outliner tool helps you work on your book while having an overview of what your chapter, a page or even the whole book would look like.

The snapshot tool allows you to take snapshots that you want to view and reference later, without losing your train of thought. Setting targets can really boost your productivity game as a book writer. Scrivener has a target setting tool to help you set your own targets and work towards achieving them. If you are the type of writer who likes working on an organized and well-planned piece, then Scrivener is your perfect match.

The binder tool allows organizing your manuscript in files, sub-files, sub-sub- files and so on. Price: The cost to purchase Scrivener varies depending on your device. This is also another writing software that can take your writing game a notch higher.

With FastPencil , you can draft, edit, publish, and even sell your book through some of the best booksellers in the industry. Just like we mentioned above, you can use this writing software to not only write your book, but it also can include editing, publishing, and marketing services — depending on your needs and budget. Because it is designed specifically for book writers, there are tools to help you section off chapters. Price: FastPencil is available for free if you only want to use it as a word processing tool, but you can pay for access to more advanced features.

But even today, it remains a top contender as the book writing software preference for many authors. Other than the top toolbar, the rest of the window is reserved as your page, with ample room for your text. For example, you can use headers to create chapters or sections of your book.

There is a free version available, but the paid version offers more advanced features like the plagiarism checker tool. You can even add Grammarly as a Chrome Extension, so it can edit and revise any writing you do — from emails, to social media posts, and more!

This is where Freedom comes in. Freedom helps you stay focused by blocking sites on the internet that might shift your attention. At first, I found the product's learning curve to be too steep, especially since the UI was a little confusing.

However, I soon learned that this was the main alternative to Microsoft Word for writing books, and for good reason. I write technical documentation on software for a living and even I think this writing software is complex.

Moreover, it lacks the fundamental benefits of being an online app. This includes a better onboarding flow, community, personalizing experiences, and the ability to understand your users' pain point in their customer journey using data. With that said, it is still one of the best alternatives to a basic drafting program like MS Word. When I first came across Novlr, I realized it was the closest thing to what we were aiming for with Squibler. In fact, I thought "why build our product if this already exists?

When I tried the product, I came across the same feeling of clunkiness. I got the feeling that it was made by coders for writers rather than writers for writers. Instead, I felt they were saying, "If you think Scrivener is too complicated, well, we're the best alternative to them. Ulysses is one of my favorite book writing software.

It's almost everything I'd want out of a mobile and desktop app. However, they lack some key functionality by not having an online presence and not making the product specifically for writing books. With that said, they perfected the minimalist design for writing - even better than how Medium did it. I like Ulysses for taking notes, but I didn't feel like it offered everything a book writer would need today in order to be successful.

They were missing not only the educational component but the community and online onboarding experience that can enrich products. Microsoft Word is the "OG" of the space. They have a desktop and online version for you to write your books. The program packs a ton of features to help you improve your writing and many writers are familiar with the product. The downside is similar to Scrivener — they wanted to be everything to everyone.

Moreover, there's no personalized experience. As a result, if you're looking to write a book with the product, it's easy to feel overwhelmed.

There's also little education and community around their product for writers interested in connecting with each other. Word has almost every feature you'd need to write books, but they remind me of why people choose Canva over Adobe Photoshop — it's the shorter learning curve and simplicity that your users value more than a large selection of features. I've written my last four books in Google Docs. I like the simplicity and that it already integrates with my workspace.

But it's not easy to use. I have to create a new document for each chapter, then have one main doc linking all the individual chapters to keep them organized. The reason I can't just write the book out in one long Google Doc like in the example below is because I need a place for my synopsis and notes.

With that said, it still makes for a good book writing software. It's hard to point out the flaws in Google Docs when it is a free product. In addition, there are many benefits to Google Docs, including easy collaboration with live chat and sharing your document with an editor. It also has a quick learning curve. Hemingway is a simple yet effective readability scanner. It doesn't offer a list of complex features and tools. When writing a book, this is a must-have feature.

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. Sigil is open-source, free software that is well regarded for producing e-books in epub format. In this respect, it is similar to, if not even better than Calibre.

Wordcradle is a free online novel writing app that really has a lot going for it. You can set up projects with word count goals and how much time you want to allocate to your writing aims. The character cards allow you to construct a profile for each one during your rough draft. They are set in an attractive table layout. Wordcradle is equipped to handle all your ideas and to track changes you might make to your storyline. Quoll Writer is a free, open-source book writing program. It is currently available for Windows, but Mac and Linux versions are coming soon in version 3.

The layout of the desktop is easy to navigate. But there is a configurable distraction-free mode to let you concentrate on writing. If you have started writing a book, you can import it from Word. You can export in docx, HTML, and also epub. Bibisco is open-source software. It is specifically designed for writing a novel. Everything you need to write a novel in one free software package.

Bibisco is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. FocusWriter has one key attribute. It is about total distraction-free writing. But it has a hide-away user interface that lets you concentrate on the one big thing you want to do. Stay focused and write. For a dedicated book or novel writing app, Shaxpir really packs a lot into its free version. With the Manuscript Builder, you can use drag-and-drop tools to rearrange any part of your manuscript.

You can move and change the order of scenes or chapters, so you can work on structures that work for you. You can also make specific notes about your characters, places, and events. There is also the facility to add your margin comments as well as collect any concept art. For free software designed for writing books, Shaxpir offers you a huge range of features. I have to include Scrivener on my list. It comes with a corkboard, an outliner, side-by-side viewing, word count targets, and a full-screen editor.

There are also print, export, and publishing tools. It has everything a writer could possibly need. Scrivener is a top-quality premium book writing program. It has everything you will need from the first to the final draft.

But it is counted by the days that you use the software. If you use it every second or third day, your trial period will last for 60 days or more. Scrivener is available to download for both PC and Mac. The online version is very convenient for checking up to a page or so of text.

It gives helpful hints to improve your writing. Read more about this app in my Hemingway Editor review. Slick Write is a worthy grammar and writing checker.

You can check for sentences starting with the same word, misplaced conjunctions, and long sentences. There is a limit of , characters, which is approximately 30, words. But this should be ample for most writers. However, I noticed it works a little slowly for long texts.

It is better to work with smaller chunks of less than 5, words. Grammar Lookup is another good choice for an online grammar checking app. It started checking for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors almost immediately. It is a good app for checking short-form writing, such as blog posts and short stories.

The first name writers associate with word processing is almost always Microsoft Word. It is the default writing tool for many writers, bloggers, and authors.

But it is definitely not cheap. Microsoft Office is, as its name implies, software for office use. It includes Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint, and other programs. You will never use these software programs for creative writing. Do you need to pay for all these extra programs to have a word processor to write a blog post, article, or short story? What is the best word processor for writers? Are there free writing software tools equal to Word? If you want to write, you can always find great word processors that cost you nothing to use.

Often they come with many other options and tools that are better suited for writers. Most of them will be suitable for your writing goals and any form of short creative writing project.

But you should note that a word processor is not the best app for writing a book. You can find better programs for authors in the next section of this article. Like Microsoft Office, Google Docs is a suite of office tools.

The big difference, of course, is that Google Docs is available for free online. If you are familiar with Word, you will have no problem at all adapting to Docs, which is the word processor component. Unlike some word processors, Docs has a word count so you can keep track of your word count goal. I know that many writers, particularly content writers, use Google Docs because of the simplicity of sharing documents online. Writing projects can be quickly and easily shared using Google Drive, which comes with 5 gigabytes of storage.

It is usually plenty of storage space for writers. You can also use Docs offline. If you are writing every day and working with other writers, content editors, proofreaders, or editors, Google Docs allows you to collaborate with ease. If you are a Mac user and all you need is a word processor, Apple Pages can handle everything you could possibly need to do. Word processing in the page layout document view is easy to work with.

All the text formatting, fonts, and writing tools are easy to find and use. It also auto-saves directly to your hard drive or your iCloud drive when you are online. There is also the file duplicate function. It gives you very easy version control of your revisions and edits. It is difficult to think of a standard feature or function in Word that is not available in Pages documents.

There is one other area where Pages shines. It has a lot more control over images compared to Word. One other big plus with Pages for authors is that you can export directly to epub. You can download it from the Mac App Store. These two writing programs are already under your noses. They are installed by default on Windows and Apple computers.

However, they are both worthy of mention because of their usefulness in converting to plain text. Most word processors can add a lot of background code over the time you take to write a long document.

Cut and pasting, saving, deletions, forgotten tabs and spaces, and formatting changes all add up to a lot that can go wrong. Because of all this code, there is a chance that the text might have issues when you use it online. It can be especially true if you use WordPress and also in publishing in ebooks. The quickest and easiest way to clean a document, big or small, is to copy all the text into a basic text editor such as Notepad or TextEdit. You can then convert everything to plain text.

Then you can copy back the clean text into your blog editor or word processor for ebook formatting. However, many writers now favor Libre Office. These two office suites branched from the same development stable, so they have a lot of similarities.

However, it uses traditional and straightforward menus, toolbars, and icons but does not have the ribbon function found in Word. In some ways, this is a good thing because it lets you get on with the writing process instead of hunting in ribbons for buttons. If you want simplicity, AbiWord is well worth trying.

It has been around for a long time now, and while it might look a little outdated, its functionality is not. The best way to describe AbiWord is uncluttered.

It is ideal if you are looking to write distraction-free. However, due to its print limitations that require an external program to see a print preview, it might not be the best alternative to write your book. Like other alternative word processors, it has all the standard features you would expect, and it works with most file types. One of its key features is that it allows drag and drop paragraphs, which can, at times, be practical.

While Excel has had this for years, Word never has, so working on two documents at the same time is much more efficient in WPS. Free Office gets a mention because it can export.

It is a convenient tool for self-publishers. Apart from that inconvenience, it has all the advanced features you would expect in a modern word processor. It comes with advanced formatting options, the ability to create databases for bibliographies and footnotes, as well as track change. All you need is your free Dropbox account to use Dropbox Paper.

As well as being a text editor, you can add audio, images, Youtube videos, Slideshare documents, and Trello cards.