OnlyOffice is a new free office suite tool that has a similar user interface to Microsoft Word, and it promises to support the ".docx" file format in near perfect compatibility.

Creating and mastering audiobooks on Audacity is easy, but you will need a few plugins and macros. Here we walk you through the setup.

Krita is a free and open source application that can be used to create book covers. It is not unlike GIMP, and it has a few advantages. First, it supports CMYK color profiles, which is preferred for printing book covers. It also supports drawing tablets for artistry and fine-tuning elements of a book cover which cannot be accomplished as easily in GIMP. The major disadvantage to Krita is the text editing is still very clunky and hard to use.

Taken together, Krita is a great application and should be used where needed for some stylistic book cover design work. It also supports the same non-destructive layer styles that Photoshop supports making it a great FOSS application for transitioning out of subscription software.

Audacity is a cross-platform, open source application for any audio file recording, edits, and manipulations. You can use this software for Audiobooks, Podcasts, and fixing the audio on your videos.

Sigil is an open source application you can freely install to turn your manuscript into perfect eBooks.

GIMP is a cross platform, free software package that can be used for simple or advanced image manipulation. This tutorial will show you how to create a sketch of any image you have.

GIMP is an open source image editor that is every bit as powerful as Photoshop. You can download it for free on any operating system you are using.

LibreOffice is a free office suite every bit as powerful as Microsoft Office. This is my preferred application for both writing my books and typesetting to send off to my distribution networks and works perfectly for KDP and Ingram manuscript uploads.