Another tool is yWriter.

This isn’t a tool for everyone, because it is research-first focused.

What I mean by that is that it’s a little clunky because background/research data is meant to go into it first, and then you are supposed to lean on that content to write your book second.

So for a non-fiction book, you would add all the data and facts and references, for a fiction book you would put in all of the important characters and plot points and things that the characters interact with.

This is so you always have a body of references to work off of so you don’t introduce inconsistencies.

Some people might find this software useful because assembling and fleshing out the underlying data is loads of fun and/or how they prep. Others might need this feature just to keep track of everything that goes into their book, as they might not be able to keep track of things like character quirks very easily in their head.

YMMV.

And I self-host precisely because of the money I save using surplussed hardware. I have a symmetrical 1Gb SOHO fibre connection from my ISP, so I can host whatever the hell I want, I just need to stand it up. And a beefy older system with oodles of RAM is perfect for spinning up VMs of various platforms for various tasks. This saves me craploads of money over even a single VM on cloud platforms like Vultr. Plus, even if I were to support a “heavy” service sufficiently in demand to warrant its own iron, it still costs me less than a year’s worth of hosting to obtain a decent platform for that service to run on all by it’s lonesome.

My only cloud costs end up being those services which are distributed for redundancy and geographical distance, such as DNS and caching CDNs.

the key is to simply seed all of your content for as long as you have it in your collection.

Tell that to TheGeeks. If you aren’t actively uploading - not just sitting there sharing, but actively sending data to anyone else - you’ll eventually be warned, then banned.

Back when I was trying to use their site, they had only one system: strict 1 ratio on a time limit. If you couldn’t maintain a 1+ ratio, and achieve it within a very limited amount of time, it didn’t matter what you grabbed or how long you shared back out, you got banned. At the time they had no other way to get ratio other than sharing back out - no freeleech, nothing. Which meant if you were wanting any content more than 2-3 HOURS old, you were looking at a ratio shortfall because there was no way to make up that ratio you were losing by downloading that content. There were simply too few peers after you to overcome the masses of seeders ahead of you satisfying peers.

It was absolutely brutal, which is why I now refuse to deal with any sites with that rule (1+ ratio with time limit) even if they have other ways (freeleech, etc.) to mitigate it. Like, f**k those sites. I’ve been seeding some torrents for close to 15 years, I have no problem letting shit remain resident in my client. So sites like MyAnonamouse it’s going to have to remain.

If you are talking about sites that have a strict, non-negotiable seeding ratio requirement, it is impossible. Your only real long-term option is to write a script that will grab everything that gets uploaded on a 30-second cadence, and then aggressively super-seed that content back out. And this is regardless of what it is - this script runs 24/7, doing about 2,880 hits on the website a day for new content. Still, even with the script it will be difficult to have your overall ratio exceed more than about 1.5-2, and you may still get banned for individual seeds that never exceed 1 because no-one is very interested in them.

I have tried to use sites that have strict ratio minimums, and long-term success is impossible without an edge like the script I mentioned. It’s why I now work with sites - like myanonamouse - that have minimum seeding times for everything you grab, regardless if anyone else needs it. They tend to be far less stressful and user-hostile.