Six Text Editors for Self-Published Authors

As independent authors, choosing a good editor is a crucial consideration. Why? Because you will need to use it for the entire duration of writing your book, which could be a significant amount of time.

When I wrote my first book, I thought editors did not matter. I could copy and paste to another editor if I found the editor not good enough. I was wrong! A book has a complicated layout (title, headings, footnotes), various font styles (font size, code styles, etc.), and elements such as images and footnotes attached to it. Copy-pasting would take a lot of work and is error-prone. Moving around your content also creates a lot of confusion in terms of your versions. You may easily lose track of what changes you have made on what files. It is a huge pain!

I have learned that when I write, I should just stick to one editor throughout the writing process.

When considering editors, here are some requirements you may need:

• Ability to generate PDF and EPUB files (PDF for paperback books, and EPUB for ebooks)
• Good-looking pages (The generated files should not be messy)

Other criteria you may consider:

• Price (depending on your budget)
• Easy to use (Writing takes a long time, so you will use it for a long time. )

Here are the options I evaluated in the past. I hope this can shed some light when you are evaluating options.