Buying writing software is usually decided on features, and features are the least durable thing about a product. What matters over the years a book takes is whether the company is still there, whether you can get your work out, and what they have done with it in the meantime. Those questions have answers, and asking them is quick.
The checklist
| Question | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| What happens if I stop paying? | Read-only, export-only, or nothing |
| Can I export everything, in a usable form? | Test it, do not take the answer |
| Is my text stored, and for how long? | Including after deletion |
| Is it used for training? | Policy or setting, and defaults change |
| Who else processes it? | Subprocessors, including model providers |
| Does it work offline? | And what happens when it cannot connect |
| How long has the company existed? | A rough proxy for whether it will continue |
| What is the export format? | Open formats outlive companies |
The second row is the one to test rather than ask. Every company says you can export your work; the question is what comes out, and a trial answers it in five minutes.
Reading the answers
- Clear and specific is a good sign about the policy and about the company.
- Vague usually means the specific answer is unwelcome.
- Defensive is informative about future support interactions.
- A link to a policy page is fine, and read the page rather than the summary.
- No answer is an answer.
The question underneath
All of these reduce to one thing: how much of your working life are you handing to this company, and how easily could you take it back. A tool that holds your manuscript, your notes and your version history has a great deal of it; one that reads a file and returns a report has almost none.
The Novel Kit is at the second end: the file is transiently processed for the scan and never stored, with no manuscript text, filename or extracted term written to any database, so there is nothing to export and nothing to lose if it disappears tomorrow. That's a limited relationship by design; the cost is that it does one narrow job.
A practical next step
Ask your current main tool what happens to your work if you stop paying. If you don't know, that is a dependency you have not evaluated.
Sources checked
- Questions to ask a writing tool about privacy
- What happens when a writing tool shuts down
- Lock-in and how to avoid it
Frequently asked questions
What is the most important question?
What happens to my work if I stop paying or you close. Everything else is recoverable; that one is not.
What does a vague answer mean?
That the answer is not one you would like. Clear policies are stated clearly; unclear ones are stated vaguely.
Should I ask support directly?
Yes. How a company answers a direct question is itself information about how they will treat you as a customer.