Novels naturally need a special writing software in order to produce the best possible results—they’re full of details that need to be taken care of separately, including chapters, scenes, locations, characters, bios, etc. And regular writing tools don’t necessarily help you achieve that. Fortunately, there are great apps that are geared towards passionate novelists and are specially designed to meet their specific requirements. One of these apps is Bibisco.
Bibisco is a paid app that only targets novelists who want to have the perfect environment to work on their novel. But before you make a rushed decision and buy Bibisco, here’s everything you need to know about the app!
- What Bibisco Is
- The pros of Bibisco
- The cons of Bibisco
- Whether we think you should use it
There is actually another tool that we recommend more called Atticus. It's not just a great writing program built for authors, but it's also the best book formatting platform on the market. If you want to know why it's our favorite, check out our comparison of the best writing software on the market.
Bibisco Features
1. Device compatibility
Bibisco is available on Windows, MacOS, and Linux. However, Bibisco is not compatible with mobile phones, which is a shame since many writers like to add something or make some changes to their project while on the go.
2. Price
Although you have to pay to use Bibisco, you can still sign up for a free trial of 30 days if you can’t decide whether you want to buy it or not. However, the free trial does not include all of the features that Bibisco offers when you buy it, but it’s still a good chance to test the waters before rushing to a decision. If you decide to get the full version of Bibisco after signing up for the free trial, you can visit their website bibisco.com and purchase the software for 23€ (excluding VAT).
The following table includes all of the features you can enjoy in both the Community Edition (free) and Supporters Edition (paid):
- Community Edition (Free):
- You can make an infinite number of projects.
- You can make scenes and chapters.
- You can make locations.
- You can make bios for your characters.
- You get to use sections for making your premise, novels, fabula, narrative strands, and setting.
- Analysis of your word count and books is available.
- You can export your work to different formats, including archive, TXT, PDF, and DOCX.
- Your work is protected by the software’s automatic backup
- Supporters Edition (Paid):
- You can make an infinite number of projects.
- You can make scenes and chapters.
- You can make locations.
- You can make bios for your characters.
- You get to use sections for making your premise, novels, fabula, narrative strands, and setting.
- Analysis of your word count and books is available.
- You can export your work to different formats, including archive, TXT, PDF, and DOCX.
- You can export your final project to EPUB.
- Your work is protected by the software’s automatic backup.
- You get to enjoy additional objects like a gun, wand, map, magic, and treasure.
- You get to enjoy additional fonts.
- You can create relations diagram to help you evaluate any problem.
- You can create sequels.
- You can write an infinite number of notes.
- You can have profile pictures for your objects, places, and characters.
- You can use distraction-free mode to help you focus more on your work.
- Dark mode is unlocked, and you can switch between it and light mode
Both the Community Edition and Supporters Edition are available on Windows, MacOS, and Linux.
3. Available Languages
One thing that can prevent writers from using any writing tool is that it doesn’t speak their language. Unfortunately, many of the great word processors are only available in English or a few other languages, which is a shame since there are many non-English speakers that wish they could use these wonderful apps, too.
Bibisco solves this problem by offering many languages to choose from, including English, French, Czech, Spanish, German, Dutch, Polish, Italian, Portuguese (Portugal), Portuguese (Brazil), Serbian, Turkish, Slovenian, and Russian.
4. Writing Features
Some may get confused after creating their projects in Bibisco since it’s unclear how to start writing. Instead of finding a space to start writing your novel, you only find a simple page in front of you. But don’t worry, the top of your screen in Bibisco has all the resources you need listed on a menu, such as Locations, Characters, Objects, and Architecture.
While your novel’s content is typed in the Chapters section, you can begin by developing your timeline, locations, and characters before actually starting to add content. Additionally, if you’re eager to begin writing your novel and type in the Chapters section, it’s not possible to do this right away; creating and describing your first chapter is the first step to writing a novel in Bibiso. Then you create your scenes. Bibisco does not allow you to do that via menus, instead, you can access these features when you click buttons.
You can use Bibisco’s formatting options like alignment, lists, italic, and bold, when you begin writing your novel. Unfortunately, Bibisco doesn’t allow formatting using block quotes, headings, or titles.
5. Distraction-free Features
Bibisco, like many other paid writing tools, provides you with a distraction-free writing environment. When you get the paid Supporters Edition, you get to enjoy Dark Mode and Full-Screen Mode, which increase your focus and enhance your overall ability to write.
6. Organizational Features
Bibisco does a great job when it comes to organizing your work, which is a great quality that even some paid writing apps don’t enjoy. The app organizes your work on the basis of chapters. As you write your novel, you can drag and drop your chapters in various orders. You can also do the same with your scenes that constitute the chapters.
Writing novels is different from writing anything else—there are many elements and there’s a lot to take care of, including locations, characters, bios, objects, among other things. All of these elements need to be well-organized to help you work more efficiently and with a clear mind. Bibisco definitely assists you in keeping track of everything, providing you with 5 distinct places for storing your content:
| Section Name | Content Type |
|---|---|
| Locations | This is the place that allows you to develop all of the locations in your novel. you’ll have to give details about everything related to the locations included in your novel, including its city, state, and country. |
| Characters | This is the place that allows you to develop all of the primary characters in your novel, as well as the secondary ones. Their identity, their origins, their looks, their thoughts—you’ll have to give details about everything related to your characters. |
| Architecture | This is the place that allows you to put the definition of your novel, put the narrative of any event in chronological sequence, and put a description to the setting of your novel. |
| Relations | You can’t use Relations unless you get the Supporters Edition. Relations gives you the ability to make charts that help you develop the relationships between your characters. |
| Objects | Just like Relations, you can’t use Objects unless you get the Supporters Edition. Objects gives you the ability to add descriptions to any object in your novel. |
7. Exporting Options
Once you complete your novel in Bibisco, you can export it to different types of files, such as TXT, Microsoft Word, and PDF. You can also export to EPUB if you have the Supporters Edition, which allows you to have an ebook version of your novel.
On the downside, formatting is not allowed before exporting, which prevents you from making any adjustments to your novel. Plus, Bibisco exports every little detail about your novel (such as the research), which is annoying because it forces you to delete some elements so you can publish a clean novel.
8. Word Count
Keeping track of the word count is crucial when writing your novel because you want to reach a certain word count and don’t want to exceed a certain word count at the same time. You also want to keep track of the word count of chapters separately, not just the word count of the whole novel.
Bibisco includes useful tools that assist you in hitting your word count goals, including a daily goal and deadline. The project tab displays both features. You can also view the words you write in a 30-day period if you want to track your long-term progress. While the Community Edition does not offer goals, it still provides you with the word count of your novel.
The Final Verdict: Should You Buy Bibisco?
We do not recommend that you get Bibisco, as you can easily get all of the same features with better programs like Atticus or Scrivener. Atticus in particular lets you have a lifetime purchase, is available on virtually all platforms, and also doubles as a robust formatting program, the best of its kind.
Therefore, we recommend you go with Atticus first.
That said, Bibisco isn't a bad program. There’s little to hate about Bibisco and tons to like. Getting Bibisco will definitely help you write better novels as it’s designed solely for this purpose. It has almost all the features and tools a novelist needs to write a great novel, including a distraction-free environment, fantastic organizational features, and other helpful features like goals.
However, for most writers, we do recommend Atticus instead.
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