Author Tools
A complete author software stack you buy once or get free. What each tool costs, what you give up, and the one category still worth a subscription.
Disclosure: AuthorAZ, listed once below, is made by the author of this site.
The problem with subscriptions isn't the monthly number. It's that a book earns nothing for the year or two it takes to write, while the tools charge the whole time — and that some of them hold your own back catalog's paperwork behind a renewal.
That's the part worth avoiding: not paying for software, but renting access to your own records.
Here is a complete stack you buy once or get free. Prices are approximate and were checked in August 2026.
| Tool | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Obsidian | Free for personal use | Plain Markdown files in a folder you own. Local-first, cross-platform. Sync is an optional paid add-on you don't need |
| LibreOffice Writer | Free | Full word processor, exports .docx. No account, no network component |
| Scrivener | ~$60 desktop, ~$24 iOS, one-time | Still the best structural tool for long-form. Pay once, own the version |
| iA Writer | ~$30–50 per platform, one-time | Clean and fast |
| FocusWriter, Manuskript | Free, open source | Lower polish, zero cost |
Avoiding: Google Docs (free but cloud-hosted), Microsoft 365 (subscription — though a perpetual Office license still exists and is cheaper over three years), Ulysses (subscription only).
| Tool | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Obsidian + a folder of notes | Free | Genuinely sufficient for most books |
| Scrivener's corkboard | Included | Free if you own Scrivener |
| Plottr lifetime license | From ~$199 one-time | If you want the visual timeline without the annual |
| Index cards and a wall | ~$3 | Not a joke |
The hardest category to escape a subscription in, because the good tools are server-side.
| Tool | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| System text-to-speech | Free | Built into macOS, Windows, iOS and Android. Listening to your manuscript catches missing words, repetition and broken rhythm that reading silently misses. The single most effective free proofreading method available |
| LanguageTool, self-hosted | Free | Open source, runs locally. Setup effort required |
| OS spellcheck | Free | Catches less, costs nothing, sends nothing |
| ProWritingAid lifetime | ~$399 one-time | If you want the deep reports without the annual. Breaks even against the ~$120/yr plan after roughly three years |
| A human proofreader | ~$200–500 per book | Not software, and better than all of the above |
Honest take: this is where "no subscription" costs you the most convenience. The combination that actually works is read-aloud plus a human proofread on the final pass.
| Tool | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Vellum | ~$200 ebook / ~$250 with print, one-time | Mac only. Expensive once, then never again. Pays for itself across three or four books |
| Atticus | ~$150 one-time | Cross-platform, the main Windows answer |
| Reedsy Studio | Free | Cloud-based, but free and the output is good |
| Kindle Create | Free | Desktop app, Amazon-shaped output |
| LibreOffice | Free | Complete control, real effort |
No subscriptions in this category at all, which is unusual and worth noticing.
| Tool | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| A cover designer | ~$500–2,500 custom, ~$200–800 premade | One-time by nature. Do not economize here |
| Affinity Studio | Free | Photo, vector and layout in one professional desktop app, offline. Free since October 2025; activation needs a free Canva account |
| GIMP, Krita, Inkscape, Scribus | Free | Open source, capable, steeper learning curves |
| Photopea | Free (ad-supported) | Browser-based, processes locally, Photoshop-like |
Avoiding: Canva Pro and Adobe Creative Cloud — both excellent, both recurring.
| Tool | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| A spreadsheet in LibreOffice | Free | Completely adequate for one or two books. Holds records but not assets |
| AuthorAZ (ours) | 14-day full trial; then $29.99 once, no subscription | Drafting and on-device dictation, plus book metadata, ISBNs and ASINs, blurbs, covers per format, buy links, quotes, reviews, pen-name branding. On-device, no account, no subscription. Mobile and tablet only; not collaborative; no compile or formatting step |
| Obsidian with a book-per-note structure | Free | Works well if you already live in Obsidian |
Avoiding: Notion and Airtable, which are excellent relational tools with free tiers that become paid as you grow, and which hold everything on their servers.
| Tool | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| MailerLite free tier | Free to 250 subscribers | Includes automations, but the ceiling is low and has dropped twice since 2025 |
| Kit free tier | Free to 10,000 subscribers | The largest free tier available. One automation only, and Kit branding on emails |
| Your own website on a static host | ~$12/yr domain | Hosting on Netlify, Cloudflare Pages or GitHub Pages is free |
| BookFunnel | From ~$20/yr | The one recurring cost most authors find genuinely worth it |
Email, once your list is real.
An email list is the only asset in this entire article that you own outright and can move between providers. When the list outgrows free tiers, paying for it is not renting access to your work — it's paying for delivery of a thing you keep. Export your subscribers periodically and the lock-in disappears.
That's the distinction worth holding on to. Paying monthly for a service that does something is fine. Paying monthly to keep reaching your own stored files is the thing to avoid.
Free build: Obsidian + system TTS + Reedsy Studio + Affinity Studio + a spreadsheet + Kit's free tier + a static site. Total: $12/year for a domain, plus the cover.
Buy-once build: Scrivener ($60) + Vellum ($200) or Atticus ($147) + AuthorAZ ($29.99)
For comparison, an equivalent subscription stack — cloud word processor, design tool, grammar checker, plotting tool, database, email — runs somewhere around $60–90 a month. Over the three years it takes to write and launch two books, that's $2,000–3,200, and at the end of it you own nothing.
Prices verified 10 August 2026. Software pricing moves — several tools in this article have changed model since 2025. The author tools directory is kept as the single current source; if a figure here disagrees with it, trust /tools and tell us.
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