For self-publishing authors
Your book, formatted on your own machine.
Squire Editor turns your manuscript into a bookstore-quality paperback and a clean ebook. No cloud. No subscription. No watermarks. Free to use forever, with one honest upgrade when you want full control.
Publishing your book shouldn’t drain your dream.
Every indie author knows the feeling. The three-thousand-dollar “publishing packages.” The subscriptions that bill whether you wrote this month or not. The apps that keep your manuscript inside their database and call it a feature. An entire ecosystem, quietly funded by the hope that this book is the one.
Squire Editor is built as the opposite of all that. Your manuscript stays in plain files, in a folder, on your computer. You pay once, or never. And the free version makes a real, finished, beautiful book, because the point is your book. Not your wallet.
Delete the app. Keep your book.
Your chapters live as plain text files you can open on any computer, in any decade. Squire Editor reads them and typesets them. It never imports them into a private database, never syncs them to a cloud you have to keep paying to visit, never needs the internet at all. Write on a plane. Format in a cabin. If you stop using the app tomorrow, every word is still sitting right there in your folder, yours.
Local-first is not a feature. It is a promise about who owns your work.
From draft to bookstore-ready.
Bring your book.
Import from Word, Google Docs, or plain text. It converts once into clean, portable files you own. Or start a new book and just write; the workspace is a calm, full writing environment with live typeset preview.
Pick a design.
Eight presets, each designed for its genre. The preview repaints in well under a second, so you see your actual book the whole time you work.
Mr. Bennet was among the earliest of those who waited on Mr. Bingley. He had always intended to visit him, though to the last always assuring his wife that he should not go; and till the evening after the visit was paid she had no knowledge of it.
Typeset.
One click builds a print-ready PDF for Amazon KDP and IngramSpark, and a clean EPUB with real cover art. Upload, publish, done.
The free version makes a real book.
No watermarks. No trial countdown. No export limits. No book held hostage until you pay.
- ✓The full writing workspace with live typeset preview
- ✓Eight designer presets and the four standard trim sizes
- ✓A paperback PDF and an EPUB with real cover art, per book
- ✓Title page, copyright page, and a live table of contents, built in
- ✓Unlimited books, forever, offline
If you never pay us a cent, we still want your book to look beautiful on a shelf. Honestly, that is the marketing budget.
One payment. Every control.
Seventy-five dollars buys the app outright, with a year of feature updates included. After that, your version keeps working forever, fully offline. When we ship a new year of major features, upgrading is a flat twenty dollars, no matter how many years you skipped, and only if you actually want what is in it. There is no subscription, and there never will be. A tool you bought should not stop working because you stopped paying rent on it.
How it compares, honestly.
Competitor prices as of 2026. Word figures reflect its Microsoft 365 subscription model.
| Squire Editor | Vellum | Atticus | Word | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| One-time price | $75 | $249.99 | $147 | Subscription |
| Free tier that ships a finished book | Yes | — | — | — |
| Works fully offline | Yes | Yes | — | Yes |
| Manuscript stays in plain files | Yes | — | — | — |
| Live preview speed | Under a second | Fast | Fast | — |
| Windows version | Coming later | — | Yes | Yes |
| Years on the market | New, and priced like it | Many | Several | Decades |
Vellum and Atticus are good tools. We simply believe your files belong to you, and that formatting software should cost less than your cover.
Fair questions.
Yes. No watermark, no time limit, no locked export. It makes a finished book. We make money when you want deeper design control, and not before.
Nothing. Your manuscript is plain files in your folder, and your PDFs and EPUBs are yours. That is the entire point of local-first software.
No. Nothing uploads. There is no server to send it to. The one internet moment is activating a license.
For now. A Windows version is planned after the Mac launch earns it.
Honestly, no. Squire Editor is built for text-driven books: novels, nonfiction, memoirs, workbooks. Full-bleed picture-book layout is a different craft and we would rather say so than sell you the wrong tool.
We don't offer them, and we think that is the fair version. The free edition is the full trial: it makes a finished book with no watermark, no time limit, and no export lock, so you can see exactly what you are buying before you spend a cent.
Why this exists
I have published three books. I formatted them in Word, then Vellum, then Atticus, and then I built the tool I wished existed and typeset my own books with it. Squire Editor is made by one indie author for other indie authors, on a simple belief: tools for creators should serve the dream, not tax it.
— Karina Vunnam, Author and App Builder