Most lists like this rank a formatting app against a text generator against a distributor, as though picking between them were the decision. It is not. Here is the same ten tools, sorted by the job they do.
Updated 10 tools
The short answer
There is no single best tool, because writing an ebook is four different jobs and most tools do one of them. To get a finished book out of a description, BookArc and Inkfluence AI generate the whole thing — chapter plan, chapters, cover and export files. To write it yourself with help, Sudowrite is the strongest for fiction and ChatGPT the most flexible for everything else. If the manuscript already exists and needs to look right, Atticus and Vellum are the formatting tools worth paying for, and Scrivener is where long, research-heavy books get organised. If you only need it formatted and on sale, Draft2Digital does both for nothing and takes a cut instead, and Amazon KDP reaches the largest audience. Most people end up using one tool from two of those four groups.
All ten tools at a glance
Ten ebook tools, the job each one does, what it is best for and the shape of its pricing.
Tool
Job
Best for
Pricing
1. BookArc
Writes it
Turning one sentence into a finished, exportable book
Free tier with no card, then a monthly plan. Credits per book.
2. Inkfluence AI
Writes it
Getting an audiobook out of the same project
Free tier, then a monthly subscription.
3. ChatGPT
Helps you write
Writing one chapter, section or outline at a time
Free tier, then a monthly subscription.
4. Sudowrite
Helps you write
Novelists who want to write the prose themselves
Monthly subscription.
5. Jasper
Helps you write
Teams keeping a book on brand with the rest of their marketing
Monthly subscription, priced per seat.
6. Atticus
Formats it
Writing and formatting in one app, on any computer
One-off purchase, all platforms, future updates included.
7. Vellum
Formats it
The best-looking typeset book, if you own a Mac
One-off purchase, Mac only.
8. Scrivener
Formats it
Organising a long, research-heavy manuscript
One-off purchase, per platform.
9. Draft2Digital
Publishes it
Free formatting plus distribution to everywhere but Amazon
Free to use; a commission on each sale.
10. Amazon KDP
Publishes it
Reaching the largest ebook audience there is
Free to publish; a royalty split on each sale.
Every tool checked against its own site on . No prices are quoted here on purpose — they change, and a stale one is worse than none. Products change too: tell us if anything is out of date.
Tools that write the book for you
You describe the book; the tool plans it, writes the chapters and gives you files. The newest group, and the one where the differences between products are largest.
1. BookArc
Our product
Best for: Turning one sentence into a finished, exportable book
BookArc plans a book from a one-sentence description, writes every chapter in order while carrying continuity forward, designs a cover, and exports a print-ready PDF, EPUB and Word file.
Where it wins
The chapter plan arrives first and is editable — retitle, reorder, cut — before any writing is paid for.
Each finished chapter is summarised and handed to the next, so chapter twelve knows what happened in chapter three.
Exports a print-ready interior at a 6 × 9 trim size with fonts embedded — the file print-on-demand services actually accept.
Writes in 18 languages, including right-to-left ones, typeset rather than only translated.
Where it does not
It drafts; it does not sit beside you while you write. If you enjoy writing, this is the wrong shape of tool.
One considered book design rather than fine typographic control — Vellum and Atticus win on that.
No distribution. You upload the files yourself.
Pricing: Free tier with no card, then a monthly plan. Credits per book.
2. Inkfluence AI
Best for: Getting an audiobook out of the same project
Inkfluence AI generates a full ebook from a prompt and is the only tool in this group that also produces an audiobook, converting chapters to narrated audio with synthetic voices.
Where it wins
Ebook and audiobook from one project, exported to formats the audio retailers accept.
A large menu of book types, and generation in a wide range of languages.
A built-in cover designer and a native iOS app, so a book can be started on a phone.
Where it does not
Chapter allowances are metered per month, which shapes how fast you can work through a long book.
Synthetic narration is not the same product as a human-read audiobook, and some retailers treat it differently.
You write the book. The tool suggests, expands, rewrites and argues with you. Better prose, more of your time.
3. ChatGPT
Best for: Writing one chapter, section or outline at a time
ChatGPT writes excellent individual chapters and is the most flexible tool on this list, but it holds no structure across a book and produces no publishable file.
Where it wins
Prose quality equal to anything here — most book tools are built on models like this one.
Argue with a draft line by line, which no generator lets you do as fluidly.
Free to try, and useful for a hundred things that are not books.
Where it does not
Continuity fails around chapter eight, when the earlier chapters scroll out of the conversation.
No chapter plan, no cover, and no EPUB — the formatting day is entirely yours.
Best for: Novelists who want to write the prose themselves
Sudowrite is the most fiction-literate assistant available, built to help a novelist expand, rewrite and describe scene by scene rather than to draft a book for them.
Where it wins
Character and world tooling that no general-purpose tool matches.
Prose-level assistance aimed at the sentence, which is where fiction is actually won.
Made for people who like writing, and it shows in every design decision.
Where it does not
Aimed squarely at fiction — thin ground for a course, a report or a workbook.
A writing environment, not a publishing one: format and export elsewhere.
Best for: Teams keeping a book on brand with the rest of their marketing
Jasper is a marketing writing platform with brand-voice controls, best suited to a company producing a book as one asset among many rather than to an author writing one.
Where it wins
Brand voice and tone settings that carry across everything a team writes.
Built for collaboration, with the workflow and seats a team expects.
Where it does not
Long-form book structure is not what it optimises for — it is built around marketing copy.
No publishing output; the file problem is still yours.
The writing is done and it has to become an EPUB and a print-ready interior. None of these write anything, and none of them pretend to.
6. Atticus
Best for: Writing and formatting in one app, on any computer
Atticus is a combined writing and book-formatting application that runs in a browser on Windows, Mac, Linux and Chromebook, exporting EPUB, print-ready PDF and DOCX from the same manuscript.
Where it wins
Writing and formatting in one place, so the manuscript never moves between apps.
A large library of chapter themes, with device previews for how a page will look on a Kindle.
Runs everywhere, which is the thing Vellum cannot say.
Bought once rather than rented, updates included.
Where it does not
It does not write for you — there is no AI drafting in it.
You need a finished manuscript, or the discipline to produce one.
Best for: Organising a long, research-heavy manuscript
Scrivener has been the serious writer’s workshop for twenty years — a corkboard, outliner, research folder and compiler for a book you are writing yourself, with no AI in it by design.
Where it wins
Nothing else handles a sprawling, source-heavy project as well.
Compiles to many formats with fine control over each.
Bought once, per platform, and it will outlive most things on this list.
Where it does not
A famously steep learning curve — budget a weekend before it pays off.
It writes nothing. That is the entire comparison with anything above it here.
The book is finished. These put it in front of readers, and two of them will format it for nothing on the way past.
9. Draft2Digital
Best for: Free formatting plus distribution to everywhere but Amazon
Draft2Digital converts a Word manuscript into a clean EPUB and a basic print PDF for nothing, and distributes to a wide network of retailers and libraries, taking a commission on sales instead of a fee.
Where it wins
The formatting tools are free to use even if you sell the book somewhere else entirely.
One upload reaches Apple Books, Kobo, Barnes & Noble and the library systems.
Nothing to pay up front, which makes it the cheapest honest way to test a book.
Where it does not
Formatting is automated and template-driven — fine, rarely beautiful.
They take a cut of every sale, which costs more than a one-off app if the book does well.
Best for: Reaching the largest ebook audience there is
Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing is where most ebooks are actually sold, and its free Kindle Create tool will format a manuscript well enough to publish, though only for Amazon.
Where it wins
By far the biggest store, and the one readers search first.
Free to publish, with print-on-demand paperbacks from the same upload.
Where it does not
The high royalty rate comes with a price band and a delivery fee on large files.
Pricing: Free to publish; a royalty split on each sale.Visit Amazon KDP
Start with the job you are missing, not the ranking
Every tool above does one of four things, and the reason these lists are usually useless is that they mix all four into one ranked column. Work out which job you actually need and the choice gets small very quickly.
Generating — you have an idea and want a draft of the whole book. BookArc, Inkfluence AI.
Assisting — you are writing it and want help with the sentences. ChatGPT, Sudowrite, Jasper.
Formatting — the manuscript exists and has to become a book-shaped file. Atticus, Vellum, Scrivener.
Distributing — the book is finished and needs to be on sale. Draft2Digital, Amazon KDP.
A generator that exports properly covers the first three. A formatting app covers one and assumes you did the rest. Neither is better; they answer different questions.
Four things worth checking before you pay for anything
1. Does it plan before it writes?
A tool that writes chapter one and then asks what chapter two should be produces a book with no arc. The plan has to exist first — and you have to be able to change it before anything is written, because the chapter list is where a book is actually decided.
2. What does it carry between chapters?
This is where chat-written books come apart, usually around chapter eight: a figure quoted in chapter two returns different in chapter nine, or a concept is introduced twice as though for the first time. Ask what the tool carries forward. If the answer is “the conversation”, it will drift.
3. Does the format change the structure, or only the label?
A workbook is not a novel. A course needs objectives and exercises; a research report needs findings that hold. A tool where “format” is a dropdown that swaps a noun in the prompt writes one kind of book with six names.
4. What file do you walk away with?
Text in a browser is not a book. A publishable one needs an EPUB for the stores and, for paperback, a print-ready interior at a real trim size with fonts embedded and no cover bound in — print services reject interiors that include one. This is the step that quietly ends most first attempts, and it is the cheapest thing to check for in advance.
BookArc plans the chapters, writes them and exports the files. Free to start, no card.
No tool on this list, this one included, checks whether what it wrote is true. Models state wrong things confidently, and every figure, date and named source in a book published under your name is your responsibility. Read the whole thing before you publish it. That is the step that separates a book from a file, and it is the one people skip.
None of them will make anybody want the book either. A finished manuscript is roughly half of a book that sells; the format you chose, the cover, the title and the audience are the other half, and those decisions are still yours.
How this list was decided
We make one of these tools. BookArc is ours, it is first on the list, and you should read the page knowing that. What we have tried to do instead of pretending otherwise is make every other entry good enough to argue for: four of the ten do something BookArc does not do at all, and each one says plainly where it beats us.
Tools were included if a person could reasonably choose them over BookArc for a real ebook project, and grouped by the job they do rather than ranked against each other across jobs. Ranking a formatting app above or below a text generator is a comparison with no meaning, so this page does not make one.
No prices are quoted anywhere on this page, deliberately. They change without notice, and a stale price repeated by a search engine for six months is worse than no price at all — so each entry describes the *shape* of its pricing, which is stable and is the part that changes the decision. Check the current numbers on each tool’s own site; every name above links to it.
Claims about the other nine products come from their own marketing and documentation, checked on the date shown under the list. Products change. If something here is out of date or unfair, tell us and it gets corrected.
Questions people ask
What is the best AI tool for writing an ebook?
It depends which job you need done. For generating a complete book from a description — plan, chapters, cover and export files — BookArc and Inkfluence AI are the two built for that, with Inkfluence adding audiobook output and BookArc focusing on structure, continuity and print-ready files. For assistance while you write it yourself, Sudowrite is strongest for fiction and ChatGPT most flexible for everything else.
Can AI write a whole ebook by itself?
It can produce a complete, structured draft, and tools built for books rather than chat will hold a plan and keep continuity across chapters. What it cannot do is verify that what it wrote is true. Every figure, date and named source is the author’s responsibility, and a full read-through before publishing is not optional.
What is the best free tool for writing an ebook?
For the writing, ChatGPT’s free tier will draft chapters, and BookArc gives 30 credits at signup with no card, which is enough to plan and write a whole book. For turning a finished manuscript into a proper EPUB and print PDF, Draft2Digital’s formatting tools are free and you can use the files even if you sell the book elsewhere.
Do I need separate tools for writing and formatting an ebook?
Not always. Atticus combines writing and formatting in one application, and BookArc writes the book and exports print-ready files, so neither needs a second tool for layout. Scrivener, Sudowrite, ChatGPT and Jasper all leave you with a manuscript and no book file, so those do need something like Vellum, Atticus or Draft2Digital afterwards.
Can you sell ebooks written with AI?
Yes. Amazon permits AI-assisted and AI-generated books and requires you to declare the assistance when you upload. Other stores have their own rules. The practical limits are on volume and on quality, not on the use of AI itself.
How many tools do most people end up using?
Two. Almost nobody needs one tool from all four groups, but very few people get by with one from a single group — a typical setup is something that helps produce the manuscript and something that gets it formatted and onto a store.
