This post, from Holly Lisle, originally appeared on her Juiced On Writing site on 9/17/08. In it, she shared links to 36 free ebooks of interest to authors. While the individual links can still be followed from that original post, Holly has since combined them all, and added some more, in a downloadable ebook of her own and offers it for free on her site.
This list has now been superceded by the publication of a free e-book containing 59 Free E-books for New Writers. You
are welcome to download this e-book. For more details and to download please see The Ultimate Guide to Free E-Books for New Writers.
Original Post (October 2008)
Looking around the web, I’ve lately found 36 free ebooks to download for writers. These do not include the seemingly hundreds of free ebooks and articles available on writing or producing eBooks to sell, as I’ve tried to concentrate on creative or other online writing guides. Links are current at this point in time. Let me know if there are any more.
In no particular order –
1. Mugging the Muse by Holly Lisle.
This 209 page eBook incorporates many of the articles and workshops from Holly Lisle’s main writing site, with additional material. It is now available as a free download both in PDF and Exe ebook versions. This is one of my favourites, I must add.
2. The Non-Celebrity’s Guide to Getting a Children’s Book Published
This free eBook is avilable from Write4Kids.com, along with a couple of others.
3. Unleashing the Idea Virus by Seth Godin
Okay, not strictly about writing, but Seth Godin’s publications are some of my all time favourites because they are applicable to any writer’s lifestyle, marketing and creativity. And most are given away quite freely, so take a look around his site. Unleashing the Idea Virus is about word-of-mouth marketing.
4. Assaulting a Writer’s Thinking by Lea Schizas
This eBook is available via Free-ebooks.net, once you’ve registered. In fact, there are 44 results under the Writing and Publishing category at Free-ebooks. However this one has a good rating and is on a general writing subject, whilst most others are more towards ezines and eBooks.
5. Book Writing for Fun and Profit by Brian Scott
From the Bookcatcher site, this 84 page eBook in PDF format contains some information, some advertisements, and some resource links.
6. Improve Your Writing Skills
This is a little Exe eBook downloadable from Mantex.co.uk. It includes some simple grammar discussions, plus chapters on writing strategies, writers block and resources. Although dated 2002, the eBook itself is a good representation of putting together an exe eBook with a good format, working links to pages, and small relevant advertising to the side.
7. Legendfire’s Writers Guide V2
The Legendfires online creative writing community has published version 2 of its writing guide in March 2008, which provides discussion around goals and starters for writing. This 54 page PDF guide is well worth downloading if you are into creative writing.
8. On Creative Writing by Linda A Lavid.
This ebook is found on the Legendfire website also, and comes in 48 pages PDF format.
9. and 10. Blogbash and Blogging for Profits
Both of these ebooks are free to download, on the specific subjects of blogging. Blogbash came about after an event on the Chitika blog and interviews 30 successful bloggers. Blogging for Profits is written by Yaro Starak who runs the successful Blog Mastermind ecourses. Both give some excellent principles for writing for the blog platform. Both are free.
11. Manage Your Writing by Kenneth W. Davis
This is a free download via the Scribd website, where you will find other writing themed books as photocopies / scans or uploaded PDFs or text files from some authors. This eBook concentrates on Business Writing.
The Oxford Essential Guide to English, a scanned edition is also currently available from Scribd, as are other dictionaries and references.
12. Creative Freelancing
A free ebook available from writingcareer.com.
13. Make Your Words Sell
This large and free ebook by SiteSell.com’s Ken Evoy with Joe Robson. At 250 pages, it’s an excellent reference for copywriters, or making your words work on the internet. While you’re there, check out the other free large ebooks in PDF format – Make Your Content Presell, and Make Your Knowledge Sell (the last being on information products or eBooks).
14. How to Write a Great Query Letter by Noah Lukeman
This ebook is relatively famous out there on the internet, and has been given back as a gift to the writing community by the author. On the same page you will now also find the free download eBook, How to Land a Literary Agent. The How to Write a Great Query Letter is available only via a free download at amazon.com however. Which means there is a difficulty from my own perspective as I’m a UK amazon customer, and the U.S. Amazon places restrictions based on geography on digital downloads.
15. Writing Success Secrets by Shaun Fawcett
A general eBook of 89 pages on everyday writing – letter writing or writing essays or papers.
16, 17 and 18. Tropes and Schemes, Begin Writing Fiction and Dangers for Fiction Writers
These three short eBooks (around 35 pages each) by Shruti Chandra Gupta are available as free downloads at the LiteraryZone blog. These are a compilation of the content on the website, where you can continue to read this content if you don’t want to download the eBooks.
Read the rest of the post on Juiced On Writing.