The writing app for indie authors.
Everything Word and Google Docs don't have: a home for your characters and world, editorial feedback on the full draft, and a clean EPUB at the end.
The problems every indie author knows.
Writing the book is hard enough. Nobody warns you about the rest of it — the note you can't find, the draft nobody reads, and six books' worth of detail you're expected to keep straight from memory.
Your notes are everywhere
Characters in a spreadsheet, world notes in Notion, three files called final. If you're not sure a note is current, you stop opening it.
Nobody reads your draft
Beta readers go quiet, critique swaps take a month, and a developmental edit costs four figures. So the draft sits.
Weeks go by without a word
You meant to write on Tuesday. Then it was a fortnight, then a month, and the readers who liked book one are still waiting for book two.
One place for the whole book.
Open a chapter and everything it needs is already beside it: the cast, the places, the rules you invented, the note you left yourself last November. Nothing to hunt for, nothing to keep in sync by hand — and with the friction gone, the days you write start adding up.
Four things a normal text editor will never do for you.
A Codex that remembers everything you invented, a real read on the draft when nobody else will give you one, a board where the whole story finally holds still, and a timeline that keeps the order it happened in beside the order you tell it in.
Your characters, one click from the page.
Write a character, place, or object down once — images, relations, your own fields. When the name turns up in a chapter, the note is right there. Book six still knows what you decided in book one.
A real read on the whole draft.
Ask for notes on structure, pacing, dialogue, and what to fix first — and get them in minutes instead of next month. Invite a co-writer or a trusted reader and their comments land in the same margin. Meet the editors who read your draft.
See how it all connects.
Put your cast on a board and draw the lines: who knows whom, who wants what, which thread runs where. The map you keep redrawing on paper, kept.
The order it happened. The order you tell it.
Drop your Codex events onto a track, group them into acts, and see where the middle actually sags. Then keep a second timeline for the order the reader finds out — the two rarely match.
The small things you'll use without thinking about them.
None of these is the reason you'd sign up, and you'd miss every one of them by Thursday: a line fixed where it sits, a note about how you sound so the edits don't drift, the prompts you keep retyping, someone else's cursor in your draft, and a way in and out for every file you own.
Fix it in place
Highlight a sentence and replace it where it sits. Add a paragraph at the cursor, then keep writing in the same document.
Writing Style
Save a short note on how you sound. Draftly uses it when it rewrites, so the result feels closer to your own draft instead of a generic AI pass.
Actions & custom prompts
Use one-click actions for grammar, phrasing, flow, tone, or punch. For edits you repeat often, save the instruction as a reusable prompt.
Write it with someone
Invite a co-writer or a trusted reader. Their cursor moves through the paragraph you're both in, and their notes land in the margin instead of your inbox.
Prose Analysis
Open the panel beside your chapter for live checks on readability, tone, clichés, and word choice. It re-reads every sentence as you type.
Take it anywhere
Bring in .docx, Markdown, a Scrivener project, or pull straight from Notion, Google Drive, and Dropbox. Leave with EPUB, Word, or a print-ready PDF.
Getting organised starts the book. Showing up finishes it.
Set a goal small enough to hit on a bad day, keep the run going, and see what four months of half-hours come to.
A number you can hit on a bad day
Pick a page a day, NaNoWriMo pace, or the number that fits between work and dinner. It counts while you write and stops asking once you're there.
A reason not to skip today
Two weeks in, you sit down on a night you'd rather not, because you don't want to be the one who ends it. Miss a day and you start another.
You're further along than it feels
Some weeks it feels like nothing moved. Then you count back over four months of half-hours, and they come to most of a first draft.
Everything about the book lives in one place now: the chapters, the characters, all the little details I used to keep in a spreadsheet and forget to update.
Jeff P.
Sci-fi indie author
Early user of Draftly
Questions & Answers
What authors want to know before they trust us with a manuscript.
What is Draftly?
How is Draftly different from Google Docs or Word?
Can I bring in what I've already written?
Can I get my book out again?
Is Draftly only for novelists?
What does it cost?
Why does Draftly exist?
Pricing
Start with free welcome credits. Each plan refills them every month and includes the five features below. You can also buy any pack once, with a smaller bonus and none of those five.
Start free. No card required.
Every account starts with 200 welcome credits, enough to try real feedback on a draft. The editor, imports, and exports are free.
$0
Everything you write, yours to keep
Draft, organize, and revise in the editor
Codex for characters, places, and lore
Import and export through Notion, Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, and reMarkable
Starter
$10/ month
For now and then.
1,999 credits a month, 20% bonus included
About 6 reads of a 90,000-word draft
Boards
Timelines
Version history
Prose analysis
Custom editors
Pro
$20/ month
For the working indie author.
4,332 credits a month, 30% bonus included
About 14 reads of a 90,000-word draft
Boards
Timelines
Version history
Prose analysis
Custom editors
Studio
$50/ month
For back-to-back books.
11,666 credits a month, 40% bonus included
About 37 reads of a 90,000-word draft
Boards
Timelines
Version history
Prose analysis
Custom editors
Write the next chapter with the whole book beside you.
Bring in what you've already written — Word, Scrivener, or a folder of chapters — drop your cast into the Codex, and everything you invented sits one click from the page.