The five best editing software options for self-publishing authors

Editing software has come a long way over the years. From the early days of just letting you know when you made a spelling mistake, it can now help you shape a paragraph into something that will read more professionally and give you an edge with your writing skills.  This isn’t to say that you won’t still benefit from having a professional editor give your book the once over, but it will save you from a great number of edits, and if you are doing everything by yourself, it can stop basic mistakes in grammar from slipping through.

The good news is that there are some great options for authors when choosing some editing software. Here are five options that you might want to consider.

One – QuillBot

Quillbot is a free online grammar checker, here you can copy and paste sections of writing into its online page, it will highlight errors and give solutions which can be applied quickly and with just one click.

However, when writing a manuscript this option will not be that practical, so they also have extensions for Word and Doc, this allows you to edit as you go.

The online site has options for paraphrasing sentences and summarizing them, which may come in handy when writing your book’s blog.

A free site which offers a lot to the author, Quillbot is worth a look.
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Two – Scrivener

Since its launch in 2007, Scrivener has gone on to become the most popular option for authors, allowing you to construct your book and offering lots of tools aimed at authors.

However, it works best when integrated with other software such as Prowritingaid which will help with your grammar and editing.

Scrivener is a great option and certainly gives an author helpful tools for all stages of writing and also comes with some free templates, but it can take a while to get to grips with using it and is more costly than most writing software options.
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Three – ProWritingAid

Another incredibly popular editing software option, with more features than others, ProWritingAid integrates with more writing software than any other and with their premium service they have no word count or size limitations.

They do offer a free version of the service, but it limits the review to 500 words, for most authors the premium is by far the better option and is priced at $79 for a year’s subscription.

A reliable and precise tool for authors, ProWritingAid is trusted by many self-publishing authors to polish their manuscripts as they go.

Four – Grammarly

Grammarly has to be the most popular checker available right now, easy to download and integrates nicely into Word, you can easily adjust your writing as you go. It also integrates with your email and social media (basically anywhere you write on your computer), ensuring that your grammar is correct at all times.

Grammarly is free but does offer premium options which (as you may already expect) can be better for authors, offering more in the way of editing tools, you can upload documents to be checked, but there are some limitations, it seems to be better when you have the extension within your writing software.

Five – Hemmingway

Hemmingway is a free online writing app (you can download it for both Windows and Mac for a one off payment of $19.99), although it’s considered a bit more basic when alongside some of the other writing apps available, it is very straightforward and will certainly help you in improving your writing skills.

It works by highlighting sections of your writing with different colors, these indicate any changes that you should consider making to the areas to make the sentence more powerful.
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The general consensus is that for a free app it will help your writing greatly and comes with tools to help you adjust your manuscript in ways which will improve its structure, it may not be the most powerful app available, but for free, it’s still very good.