The best software for writing a book

What to look for in book-writing software, and how the options compare for a long, serious project.

Writing a short piece, any word processor will do. Writing a book is a different problem, tens of thousands of words held together over months, with research underneath and a structure to keep straight, and the right software makes that far easier. Here is what to look for, and how the main options compare.

What a book actually needs from software

A book asks more of a tool than a blank page. You need somewhere to hold the structure and move chapters around, a way to keep your research and sources to hand, help drafting and editing without losing your voice, and a record of versions so you can step back. A tool that does only one of these leaves you stitching the rest together by hand.

The word processor

Word and Google Docs are where most people start, and for a very short book they are enough. For a long manuscript they strain, since there is no real way to hold structure, manage sources or see the whole at once, and the file becomes unwieldy. They are best kept for the final formatting, once the book is written elsewhere.

Scrivener and the writing apps

Scrivener is the long-standing favourite for serious writers, and for good reason. It organises a big manuscript better than almost anything, with a binder, notes and a corkboard. What it does not do is help you write, research or check, which all stay on you. Atticus, Ulysses and the others are cleaner and simpler, and make the same trade, strong organisation with no help on the actual craft.

The AI writing tools

A wave of AI tools now offer to draft for you, and they are genuinely useful for getting words down. Most are built for fiction or for short marketing copy, though, and they tend to ignore the things a true book depends on, structure, real sources, a consistent voice, and any way to check that what they wrote is true. Used carelessly, they produce a lot of generic prose with nothing underneath it.

What to look for

For a memoir, a biography or a family history, the tool worth having is the one that handles the whole job: gathering and mapping your sources, holding your voice across the book, drafting and editing to a standard, and checking the facts against the sources, while leaving every decision with you. Few tools do all of that, which is exactly the gap Incipit was built to fill.