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It's easier than ever before to become a published author online. But, by using the online tools, you can write a book online much faster too!
No matter how you slice it, there’s just no good way to write a book quickly. Part of what makes books great is the investment of time, energy, and passion needed to bring them to life. That said, there certainly are tools that can speed up the process—especially for first-time authors wanting to author and publish their first book online.
So, since we’re pro all-things-writing at Jasper, we’ve compiled a list of tools to help you write a book online faster. While this list is by no means exhaustive, you’ll find it is a good jumping-off point.
Staying organized is one of the best ways to write faster. Writing a book online is no exception. With a centralized go-to location for all your notes, thoughts, inspiration, and questions, you won’t lose precious writing time rifling through papers on your desk.
Evernote offers an easy way to save and store text, images, files, and to-do lists in a personal space to support your writing process. Search and keyword tagging help you stay organized as your project gathers momentum. You can also sync your Evernote account between devices, so your research, notes, and writing inspiration are available wherever you happen to be.
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Evernote offers a free subscription plan that includes the following:
Evernote’s paid Personal plan costs $8.99 per month and includes these additional features:
Milanote presents authors with a different approach to taking and managing notes. Users collate information and media on a digital whiteboard and can organize information visually by dragging it around and adding arrows, comments, and color coding. In addition, whiteboards can be added within whiteboards, giving users added dimensionality to their organization.
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Milanote offers a free plan which includes the following:
Their paid per-person plan is $12.50 per month and offers some upgrades:
Google Drive, Google’s cloud-based storage solution, doesn't offer research-specific features like the other products listed here. But for those with their own note-taking system, Google Drive can be a solid storage and syncing tool. This is especially true for those already using other aspects of Google’s productivity suite (e.g., Google Docs, Google Calendar, Gmail, etc.).
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Google Drive’s personal plan is free and includes the following:
Google Drive’s Business Standard plan is $12 per user per month and includes these extras:
Successful self-published authors know that great books begin with great research. In fact, while you may have a general idea about your book's subject matter before you sit down, sometimes it takes research to inspire the book idea itself.
But book research should also include learning about your audience—and your competition. There are many tools to help you accomplish this.
KDSpy is a browser-based audience targeting tool designed to help writers and authors study trends in the publishing industry and its competitive landscape. KDSpy allows you to identify keywords, sales rankings, and the sales performance of published works (yours and those of other authors you deem important to keep an eye on).
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There is a one-time $97 licensing fee (currently on sale for $69).
Publisher Rocket is another audience-targeting tool used by the self-publishing community. This tool searches Amazon and Google for popular or niche keywords to help you decide what to write about and whom to write for.
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Publisher Rocket has a one-time $97 licensing fee (monthly subscription TBD).
AMZ Suggestion Expander Pro is a Chrome plugin that expands the results of your search bar as you research your book on Amazon. Suggestion expanders are tools specifically designed to help you discover combinations of keywords with a high search volume—that is to say, what customers are looking for.
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AMZ Suggestion Expander Pro is available for $9.97 per month.
There are many tools out there to help with both general and specific types of writing. There’s also a lot of overlap between the outlining, writing, and editing processes. So we’ve included a variety of different tools here to help set your words in motion.
Grammarly is a popular AI-powered writing assistant that works on practically anything connected to the internet—including Grammarly’s own desktop app for Windows and iOS (iPhone and iPad), Android, and as an extension for popular browsers like Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.
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Grammarly’s free plan includes the following:
Grammarly's Premium plan costs $12 USD per month and includes everything in the free plan, in addition to those features listed in the Features above.
Jasper (that’s us!) is an AI-powered, flexible yet robust virtual writing assistant. Jasper generates compelling original content, and its growing library of writing templates includes tools for conquering every self-publishing author's nemesis—writer's block. The wide array of features we offer are helpful to some authors because Jasper can help out with so much of the non-novel marketing or writing work you’ll need to do as part of the publishing and promotion process.
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Jasper offers several flexible pricing plans ranging from the $39/mo Creator plan to custom Business plans for an enterprise-level solution.
Chances are good you’ve crossed paths with the ubiquitous Microsoft Word. For all its uses, Word is an especially handy tool for writing books. Plus it's always a good idea to try and use the tools you already have, so your resources can go to other areas of your process that need a boost.
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As long as you have a Microsoft account, you can use Microsoft Word for free. However, the free option is restricted to Word’s basic functionality. For features and formatting options authors may need to write their book (e.g., creating bibliographies, citations, etc) users will need a subscription plan, which start at $6.99 USD per month.
Scrivener is an outlining and writing application available for macOS, Windows, and iOS.
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A free 30-day trial is available (based on days used, not calendar days). One-time licensing fees are $23.99 for iOS and $59.99 for macOS or Windows.
Xmind is an app designed to support the practice of mind mapping. Mind mapping can help authors (especially first-time authors) organize their thoughts and discover connections between themes, ideas, and characters. Unlike other mind-mapping apps, Xmind’s free tier does not limit the number of mind maps you create.
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A free plan is available. The pro plan costs $5.99 per month and includes the following:
Zoho Writer is an online word processing tool that features Zia, an AI-powered writing assistant. Zia offers contextual grammar, style, and readability suggestions in real-time.
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Zoho's word processor is free to use. Zoho WorkDrive storage plans start at $3 per user per month for 1 TB of storage.
When your book is ready to publish, do yourself a favor and take a few deep breaths (or a mini-staycation). Once the book writing process is done, it’s time for the self-publishing and promotion processes to begin.
Don’t worry, though. Many of the tools we’ve covered above can also help get your book into your audience's hands—or e-readers.
AI writing tools like Jasper can also help with all the different kinds of writing it takes to put a book out there—like summaries, meta descriptions, headlines, and advertising copy.
When you’re ready, take full advantage of Jasper’s own free trial to ensure that when your book is ready for publishing, you are too!
Austin Distel is the Sr. Director of Marketing at Jasper, your AI creative assistant. He's also an Airbnb superhost in Austin, Texas. You can follow Austin's adventures around the internet and the world at distel.com.
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Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s.
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s.