Novlr or LiberScript: Which Suits Your Book?

The Gist

Novlr is a calm, cloud-based place to write, with a free plan to start and paid plans that add tools such as grammar and style checking. LiberScript is a browser workspace that goes beyond writing into a full-manuscript critique and professional interior formatting, with every feature unlocked on short, one-time passes. Choose Novlr if you mainly want a pleasant drafting space; choose LiberScript if you want to take the manuscript all the way to publish-ready files.

What Each Tool Is

Novlr is a web-based writing app designed for novelists and other long-form writers. It focuses on a distraction-free writing experience, organizes your work into chapters, syncs your writing across devices while you are online, and offers paid plans with extras such as a built-in grammar and style checker, additional backups and ebook export.

LiberScript is also browser-based, but it is designed around the whole route to publication. It imports or lets you write a manuscript, analyzes the full book with a critique and grammar check, turns it into a designed interior with a paginated preview, and exports an EPUB, a print PDF and a DOCX.

Feature Chart

The Writing Environment

Novlr's appeal is its calm, uncluttered page. It is built to help you write steadily without fiddling with settings, and it keeps your work in sync across the devices where you sign in.

LiberScript also aims for focus, with two ways to write. Write mode shows one chapter or section at a time while your book's structure sits in a sidebar, and every section type, from prologue to appendix, is one click away. Flow mode lays the whole manuscript out as a single continuous page styled like a printed book, which is ideal for drafting in long stretches or pasting in existing work. Sticky notes float over any screen and never end up in your exported book.

Both save automatically. Which feels better is personal, so try a chapter in each before committing, ideally a scene you know well so you can focus on the tool rather than the writing.

Checking Your Prose

Novlr's top plan includes a grammar and style checker, which helps polish sentences as you write and catches slips before they pile up across a long draft.

LiberScript's critique works at the scale of the whole book. It reads every chapter at once and surfaces patterns that are easy to miss after many rereads: overused adverbs, passive voice, filler words, clichés, repeated phrases and moments that tell rather than show. Pacing and dialogue balance are tracked chapter by chapter, a grammar and spelling check covers everything, and a readiness score gives you a number to improve on with each revision.

Designing the Book

Novlr is primarily a writing tool. Authors who want a professionally formatted paperback generally take their manuscript to a dedicated formatter.

LiberScript includes that formatter. The Design tab starts you from a theme, then lets you adjust fonts, sizes, line spacing, chapter openers, drop caps, epigraph styles, chapter numbering and whether chapters begin on a new right-hand page. The preview shows real paginated spreads at your trim size, with running headers and page numbers, and you can flip between print and ebook views. Export the EPUB and print PDF, and they are ready for KDP, IngramSpark, Draft2Digital and other platforms.

Nonfiction and Footnotes

Novlr is designed mainly with novelists in mind. Nonfiction authors often need extras that fiction rarely does, especially footnotes and a bibliography.

LiberScript handles both. You insert a footnote anywhere using a short citation form with fields such as author, title, publisher and year, and the notes are numbered automatically across the entire book. A bibliography section is generated from every footnote you used, and you can rename it References or Works Consulted while it keeps updating itself. That saves a great deal of manual cleanup in research-based books.

Working With Editors and Co-Authors

If others need to work in your manuscript, check how each tool handles it. LiberScript allows unlimited collaborators on a project with every pass, so a co-author, editor or beta reader can work inside the same book. It also exports a clean DOCX when an editor prefers tracked changes in Word.

Free Plans, Paid Plans and Passes

Novlr's free plan lets you start writing at no cost, with a limit on how many projects you can keep, and its paid plans add features such as grammar checking, extra backups and ebook export. Plan names and prices have changed over time, so check Novlr's pricing page for the current details.

LiberScript has no free plan. Instead, its passes cost $3.99 for a day, $9.99 for a week, $29.99 for a month, $99.99 for a year or $299.99 for Lifetime, and every pass includes the critique, the design tools and all exports. Passes never renew on their own, and buying more time before a pass ends adds to what you have.

If you want to write for months at no cost, Novlr's free plan is the obvious place to start. If you want the finishing tools for a few weeks, a LiberScript pass is often cheaper than months of a paid writing subscription.

Keeping Your Work Safe

Novlr backs up your writing to the cloud as you work online, and its top plan adds extra backups to services such as Google Drive or Dropbox.

LiberScript autosaves continuously and keeps your projects in your account. Export your EPUB, print PDF and DOCX while your pass is active, so you always hold standard files of your own; projects remain available for a seven-day grace period after a pass ends.

Importing an Existing Draft

If your book already exists elsewhere, LiberScript can take it in several formats: DOCX, EPUB, PDF, Markdown or plain text. On import it looks for the book's real structure, separating the title page, copyright page, dedication, prologue, chapters, epilogue and back matter into their own sections, and it keeps bold and italic text instead of flattening everything. That is especially handy for older manuscripts saved as PDFs or ebooks.

Using Both

1. Draft in Novlr, starting on the free plan if it covers the number of projects you need.
2. Export the manuscript when the draft is complete and revised.
3. Import it into LiberScript, which detects chapters and front and back matter automatically.
4. Run the critique, revise what it flags and design the interior.
5. Export your EPUB and print PDF, ready for publishing.

If you are still choosing a drafting tool, our guide to writing apps for authors compares several more.

Who Should Choose Which

Frequently Asked Questions