... five or six different apps just to write a single book. And every single one of them wants a monthly subscription. The subscription tax Let s be honest about what that looks like. Grammarly is $144 a year. World Anvil is $50. Throw in a writing app, a timeline tool, maybe an AI assistant. You re easily past $300 a year in subscriptions, and you haven t even sold a book yet. That math doesn t work for most fiction ... ... finally had enough of Microsoft Word. I was writing a fantasy series with deep worldbuilding, hundreds of characters, multiple magic systems, interconnected timelines and Word was buckling under the weight of it. But when I looked at the alternatives