Thursday, October 09, 2008

Free the Books Ten

Ten (or More) Books You Can Get for Free

Project Gutenberg has available for free download Short Story Writing ~ A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story by Charles Raymond Barrett

The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri is available in e-book format for online reading or download over at Scribd. *Note 9/3/10: Since Scribd.com instituted an access fee scam to charge people for downloading e-books, including those I have provided for free for the last ten years, I have removed my free library from their site, and no longer use or recommend using their service. My free reads may be read online or downloaded for free from Google Docs; go to my freebies and free reads page for the links. See my post about this scam here.


eHarlequin offers two free books if you sign up for their subscription service (which, according to the web site, you can cancel at any time.) This month they're featuring freebies with subscriptions to a number of their traditional series in Larger Print

Need some advice on viral marketing? Online sales guru Seth Godin has his much-acclaimed marketing book Unleashing the Idea Virus available for free download in e-book form.

Also on Scribd: Return to Wonderland's free e-book, How to Write a Fairy Tale (warning: while all the naughty bits are covered, some of the graphics included in the e-book may not be considered appropriate by some parents for their kids.)*

Marketing expert Janice Jacobs has her free e-book, Lousy Writer's Guide to Writing Persuasively, posted over at Scribd.*

Harper Collins has a First Look program for bloggers who want "to preview books in literary fiction, general fiction, suspense, biography, cookbooks, and other genres, for readers who make a difference – like you! Each month, Advance Reading Editions (AREs) of great books by fabulous authors are offered that you will have the opportunity to review. Reviewers are selected at random, but you must register to be eligible. In joining the program you may select your favorite genres and we will let you know when a book in your preferred category is offered." (Program rules can be found here)

LibraryThing has an early reviewer program which distributes ARCs to interested members who sign up, see more details at their Early Reviewers FAQ page.

Robert Louis Stevenson's Essays on the Art of Writing over at Project Gutenberg.

Author Shiloh Walker is having a contest for bloggers which offers among other prizes an ARC of her Feb '09 release Fragile.

Readers, do you know of any good free e-books out there? Writers, are you offering any freebies or giveaways in the near future? Let us know in comments.

6 comments:

  1. I'm still giving away ebooks of Hal #1, but you were kind enough to mention that before. It's good to see there's plenty of reading material out there.

    (I will mention one thing - my freeware ebook reader, yBook, includes a Gutenberg catalog so you can click to download and read any file on their site.)

    Sorry I've not been commenting lately - I've had to cut down on all the blogs I visit thanks to a heavy Real Life workload. I still use RSS to keep up with happenings though.

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  2. Anonymous11:25 AM

    :-) Hey, cool.... thank you!

    Since ya asked, yes, I've got another giveaway coming up at the end of November~I'm giving away a Sony Reader to a member of my newsletter. Details are here. Then there are my regular or sort-of-regular contests....*G*, and a couple of scavenger hunts. I see me spending mucho bucks at the USPS in the next couple of months.

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  3. Baen free library has quite a few of their books online: http://www.baen.com/library/

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  4. Donald Maass' The Career Novelist is currently a free ebook download. Don't know how long that'll last so you might want to grab yours quick!

    http://www.maassagency.com/books.html

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  5. Anonymous3:35 PM

    Tor.com posts free ebooks of some of their science fiction/fantasy novels every month for registered users (and it is free).

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  6. Anonymous7:54 PM

    I hunt down free book downloads weekly and post links to them Mondays on my blog (downloads are all courtesy of authors or publishers).

    Book bloggers might want to check out Mini Book Expo for Bloggers.

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