Whether you write novels or short stories, write for fun or for profit – you’ll find use for these amazing tools that will boost your writing to the next level. There are tons of technological advancements in happening in every sector of the world, and if you want to keep ahead of the crowd – it’s important to keep an eye on tools that could improve your writing. Here are my top 3 tools for authors that will boost your KDP journey.
1. SmartEdit Writer
SmartEdit Writer is a tool that helps you plan and create your masterpiece easier. If you’re still using Word to create your books, then you’re living in the past. Word makes it way too easy to create structural problems when publishing. Extra spaces and strange characters seem to pop out of nowhere. SmartEdit Writer also helps you be more organized. It has a tabbed feature by default, so you can keep every chapter (or scene) separate and easily jump back and forth in your story to make changes. It can also make backups for you every time you close a document, meaning that you’ll never lose a chunk of your writing ever again. All these features are completely free to use with no upsells.
Paid Alternative: If you have a few dollars to spare, then Scrivener is a great tool for creating your perfect novel. It has many more features such as name generators, cloud backups, pre-made templates, extensive formatting options, and publishing features.
2. ChatGPT
Now I know what you’re thinking – a real writer doesn’t use AI for their books and the output isn’t that good anyway. Well, you might be in for a surprise. Although ChatGPT can’t be used to write a book for you, it is one of the best and fastest ways to get past writer’s block. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve put a scenario into ChatGPT and asked its opinion on how to complete the scene – and it’s given me a workable way to get to my chosen outcome. You might need to regenerate ideas multiple times before you hit gold, but it can turn weeks of writer’s block into only a few hours. ChatGPT is completely free. If you want to use ChatGPT Plus, then there is a monthly subscription fee, but free ChatGPT is more than enough to get some amazing ideas to get the creative juices flowing again. This is one of the best free software for writers currently available.
Paid Alternative: Sudowrite is a tool that can actually write scenes and chapters for you. You show it your style of writing, give it an in-depth overview of each scene you want in your chapter, and it will write out everything for you. You get complete chapters ready within a few minutes, and can then edit them to be the way you want them. This tremendously cuts down the time it takes to complete a novel.
3. KeywordTool
When publishing a book on Amazon, you need to fill in the 7 keyword boxes. These keywords are what Amazon uses to direct customers to your novel. This is one of the most important parts of bringing traffic to your books. Tools like KeywordTool will help you to find keywords that people are searching for on Amazon. By choosing the right keywords, you can get more eyes on your book and, in turn, make more sales. Free tools like KeywordTool won’t give you the total number of searches that are made for those specific keywords, but will give you a list of keywords that you can work with. This list will be significantly longer than anything you can make up off the top of your head.
Paid Alternative: Publisher Rocket is the most popular tool for finding keywords on Amazon. While most tools require you pay a monthly subscription – Publisher Rocket gives you access to unlimited keywords for paperback novels, ebooks and Audible for a once-off charge. This means that you’ll never have to pay for another keyword tool ever again.
Free Software for Writers – Top 3 Tools for Authors
Free software for writers will help you create and eventually publish your KDP books without costing a cent. By putting these tools to work, you can cut down your writing and publishing times considerably. These top 3 tools for authors are must-haves for anyone that wants to get into the publishing business on Amazon KDP or with any other similar company. You’ll always need a platform to write, help with writer’s block and good keywords for your marketing.