The Modern Indie Author Stack: Crucial Tools for Self-Publishing Success
Discover the essential tools needed for a modern indie author stack. Learn how to streamline your writing, plotting, and publishing process for professional results in 2026.
Book Writing App
The Book Writing App Built for Authors
Get the best AI-powered book writing app to write, refine, design, and publish* — all without breaking your flow.
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✦ Versatility
Made for all authors. Fiction, nonfiction, and beginner.
The simple way to write your book, organize your deep research, track your biggest ideas, and bring every story to life in one place.
Everything a Book Writing App Should Include
Everything you need to write, design, and publish your book, all in one place.
✦ Write Professionally
A Book Editor Built Into Your Writing App
Write your book in the editor designed just for authors. Access powerful tools like focus mode, tone analysis, goal settings, and notes.
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Stay Focused Use Focus Mode to calm your mind and get rid of distractions.
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Auto-formatting Should you indent, double space or break? Don't worry—we've got you covered with auto-formatted text.
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AI Editing Get professional editing directly in your manuscript with the help of Eddy, our AI editor. Ask questions about your book's plot, character development, chapter flow—you name it. You'll get custom advice about your book immediately. And most important: we never train on your content.
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Themes Choose from tons of beautiful themes that boast hand-curated fonts, easy readability, and great personality. Use them in both ebook and print formats too!
✦ Book Planning
Plan, outline, and organize your book with notes
Create characters, store research, tag and organize with binders. Plus easily bring your notes directly into your book when you're ready.
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Binders Organize your notes by topic, chapter, characters— you name it. However you choose to plan, you can do it with binders.
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Tags Easily search and find content in your notes with tags. Tags let you organize ideas around themes or details in your book.
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Multitasking You bring your notes directly in your manuscript to easily reference research, copy a source, or simply jog your memory.
✦ Create Illustrations
Illustrate your book
Easily add beautiful illustrations to your book. Use the powerful scene creator or simply convert your manuscript's text to an image.
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Image Styles Comic book, children's illustration, technical drawings? Your choice. Create any style you can imagine and match all your book's images in one place.
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Scene Creator Our powerful image generator lets you select text directly in your book and convert into beautiful imagery that highlights your writing.
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Manage Characters (NEW) You can now create one-of-a-kind characters and use them in your illustrations. Document their personas and even describe how they act in your book. The generator will make sure all your illustrations are consistent and look amazing.
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Creative Playground You name it—all the details of your book can be illustrated, organized and stored for future use. You can even come back and make versions of an image if you want to try something new.
✦ Book Covers
Create book covers for print and ebooks
Creating a book cover has never been simpler. You focus on the creative and we'll handle all the boring stuff.
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Print and Ebooks Designing a cover has never been easier. Just select your book size or customize your own.
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Design Anything Describe your cover or import your own. Our AI-powered cover generator will create a layout that matches your book's unique style and imagery
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Add Book Imagery Easily add your characters, artifacts or custom imagery from your book directly onto the cover layout for a beautiful design that will turn heads.
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Import ISBNs Generate your ISBN barcode directly in the book with the click of a button.
✦ Publish Book
Publish your book to ebook and print formats
Publish your book to print and ebook formats easily. It just takes minutes to make a beautiful layout with your own unique theme and style.
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Perfect Print Layouts Creating the perfect print-ready book is easy. Just pick your theme and book size. Want to make it your own? You have tons of customization options at your finger tips.
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Ebooks Pick a theme and add your cover. That's it! You'll have an amazing looking ebook in minutes when you're ready to go live.
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Beautiful Themes Storyloft come preloaded with fantastic themes—all of which are customizable. Effortlessly create a style that fits your book's personality.
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Book Cover Sync All your book covers are synced with your manuscript so you can easily test different covers on e-readers and PDFs.
✦ Set Goals
Achieve your writing goals in record time
Create a writing plan and track your progress directly in your manuscript. Keep tabs on your high scores and daily progress too. It's never been more simple—or more fun!
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Daily Goals Set daily word count goals and track your progress over time.
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Writing Streaks Watch your writing streaks increase as you show up every day. Increase as high score as you keep coming back.
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Break Records Be amazed as you break new records in consistency, word count, daily records and more.
One Platform for the Entire Book
The All-in-One Novel Writing Alternative to Scrivener and Google Docs
For years, authors have had to cobble together messy software stacks—using Microsoft Word or Google Docs to write, Scrivener to organize, external AI tools to edit, and separate design software for book covers, formatting, and publishing.
Storyloft is built from the ground up as a modern, unified book writing app that supports the entire author lifecycle. Research, outlining, manuscript writing, AI editing, illustration, cover design, ebook creation, print formatting, and publishing tools stay connected inside the same book project.
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For research-heavy books: See how Storyloft compares directly with Zotero and Scrivener for source management, manuscript research, citations, notes, long-form organization, and nonfiction writing.
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For indie publishing: Discover why modern writers are moving their entire indie author software stack to Storyloft to write, edit, illustrate, format, design, and publish books in one secure workspace.
Replace a scattered writing stack with one connected platform. Your manuscript, research, notes, AI context, citations, visuals, formatting, and publishing tools remain together from the first idea through the finished book.
One connected book writing platform for research, outlining, manuscript writing, AI editing, illustration, cover design, formatting, ebooks, print books, and publishing.
Author Resources
Featured Writing and Self-Publishing Guides
Explore practical guides to book writing software, AI-assisted editing, author organization, manuscript privacy, and the tools independent authors use to write and publish books.
Writing Software Comparisons
Compare Storyloft With Popular Book Writing Software
See how Storyloft compares with leading writing, formatting, and AI-assisted author tools. Each guide examines the writing experience, organization, artificial intelligence, book design, formatting, publishing support, and overall workflow.
Looking for the right book writing software? Start with the comparison closest to your current workflow, then evaluate which platform can carry your book from first draft to publication with the fewest disconnected tools.
View all comparisonsOur Blog (is awesome)
Check out our content to learn about writing, publishing, and features in Storyloft.
How to Format Manuscript for Agent
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How to Format and Export Your Book for Amazon KDP, IngramSpark, and Ebook Platforms
When your manuscript is finished, the next hurdle is usually formatting. That is where a lot of authors get stuck. Print books need the right trim size, margins, front matter, and high resolution images. Ebooks need clean structure, a cover,…
1-Click KDP Formatting Secret: How I Set Up a Print-Ready Book PDF in Storyloft
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Can a Book Writing App Handle a 250,000-Word Novel?
Most writing apps feel fine right up until a manuscript becomes real. A handful of chapters? Sure. A light draft? No problem. But a production-scale book with more than 230,000 words, dozens of chapters, formatting demands, cover work, print export,…
Free Novel Outline Generator for Authors: Build a Complete Book Outline in Minutes
A messy outline is one of the fastest ways to stall a book before it really begins. I know how easy it is to sit there with a strong premise, a few exciting scenes, maybe a title you kind…
How to Format a Book for Print and Ebook with Storyloft
Book formatting has a reputation for being way more painful than it should be. A manuscript is finished, the writing is done, and then suddenly the next hurdle is trim sizes, margins, mirrored headers, drop caps, EPUB exports, and trying…
FAQ
Answers to help you get started
Find quick answers to common questions about Storyloft's writing platform for authors.
Yes. Storyloft provides a best-in-class manuscript editor built for authors, so you can draft, revise, and organize long-form writing with confidence.
With Storyloft’s editor, you can control page layout and formatting preferences, work in a distraction-friendly writing environment, and keep essential tools close at hand. It includes built-in side panels for notes, comments, and history so you can track changes, collaborate thoughtfully, and make iterative improvements faster—all within a smooth, author-first workflow.
If you want faster drafts and sharper revisions without losing your author voice, yes—Storyloft includes an AI writing assistant designed for manuscript work. You can ask for feedback, brainstorming, and targeted improvements, then apply results directly to your manuscript so you’re not stuck copy/pasting between tools.
If you struggle with turning suggestions into real edits, Storyloft streamlines that gap. The platform supports AI-assisted editing flows where the output can be inserted into your document as structured content—so you can move from “idea” to “edit” quickly and keep momentum.
If you’re worried AI will sound generic or inconsistent, Storyloft is built around your writing style. It supports voice-aware rewrites that aim to preserve your tone and preferences, helping you revise while keeping your manuscript’s personality intact.
If you need reliable references while you write, Storyloft’s research assistance is designed for authors who want sources they can use. It supports research-oriented workflows (including citation/source handling) so you can go from question → evidence → revision without leaving your writing session.
If you want your book to feel organized—not just “stuff written down”—Storyloft helps you manage structure. You can work with manuscript sections and maintain an organized workflow so drafting, revising, and refining happens in a way that supports long-form storytelling.
If you want your manuscript to come alive with visuals, Storyloft includes dedicated illustration workflows. You can generate and manage illustration sets tied to your project—making it easier to plan, produce, and iterate on visuals that match your story.
If you don’t nail the look on the first try (most authors don’t), Storyloft supports iterative improvement. You can revisit generated outputs and refine them so the final visuals match your intended characters, tone, and style.
The best book writing app for authors should do more than provide a blank page. Storyloft combines AI-powered editing, outlining, notes, goal tracking, illustration tools, and professional print and ebook formatting in one platform designed specifically for writing books.
Absolutely. Storyloft is designed to help beginner authors move from an idea to a finished manuscript with tools for outlining, organizing notes, setting writing goals, editing chapters, and formatting books for publication.
Yes. Storyloft runs directly in the browser, making it easy to use as a book writing app for Mac, Windows, and other desktop devices without requiring traditional software installation.
Yes! You can create both ebook and print book covers. If your book deserves a professional cover, Storyloft provides a cover creation experience tailored for authors. You can generate cover designs and iterate within a guided workflow—so your cover evolves alongside your manuscript.
If you want a cohesive publishing-ready set of visuals (not a single image), Storyloft supports generating additional cover assets. This helps you build a consistent cover system that works across formats. This includes back-of-cover marketing blurbs, spine content and visual assets too.
If you’re serious about finishing, Storyloft supports publishing-oriented outputs. You can use export flows designed for manuscript-to-publication transitions—so your work can move from draft to shareable formats efficiently. We support ready-to-print paperback manuscripts and publishable ebook format for platforms like Kindle and more. Formats include Docx, Ebook (epub), and print-ready PDFs.
If you often lose track of sources, ideas, and references during revision, Storyloft’s notes and citation workflows keep those artifacts attached to your writing process. That means fewer “where did I read that?” moments and a smoother revision loop.
If momentum matters, Storyloft includes writing progress tracking features like goals, streaks, and stats. This turns drafting into a system you can maintain, not something you restart every time you get stuck.
If typography and presentation are part of the experience you want, Storyloft lets you tailor the reading/work environment. You can adjust themes and layout-related settings so the editing experience matches your aesthetic and workflow.
If you want editors, co-writers, or beta readers involved, Storyloft supports collaboration via invites and role-based access. This makes it easier to review together without giving full access to everyone.
If you want AI and creative tooling without surprises, Storyloft is built around a clear credit/subscription model and upsell flows when limits are reached—so authors can keep writing with minimal friction when you need more capacity.
Yes. Storyloft is free to start and gives authors access to core writing, outlining, formatting, and AI-assisted features with up to 5,000 words included and no credit card required.
Yes. Storyloft includes Eddy AI, an author-focused writing assistant that can help brainstorm ideas, improve scenes, rewrite passages, organize story structure, and provide manuscript-aware editing support directly inside your book project.
Every stage of your book, without ever switching tabs.
Everything you need to write, format, and develop your book — free to start with 5,000 words included.