Free stuff for authors
We frequently run special offers and promotions, giving
away anything from discounts to entire Publishing Packages.
On this page we
publish permanent offers designed to give back to the
author community. Please help yourself to anything on
offer.
How to get free books from us
Want free books? Here's how: If you have published your own book with Spire Publishing and if you are consequently introducing us to a friend of yours who then also publishes his or her book with us we'd like to say thank you.
- Introduce an author to us who publishes a book using the Spire Professional Package and you will receive 20 free copies of your own book.
- Introduce an author to us who publishes a book using the Spire Essential Package and you will receive 15 free copies of your own book.
- Introduce an author to us who publishes a book using the Spire Print Ready Package and you will receive 10 free copies of your own book.
A free Thesaurus for Macintosh OS X users
Do you use a Thesaurus when writing? Forget about hauling a heavy book around, instead follow this link over to Nisus Software and download the free Thesaurus on offer. And while you're at it, take a look at Nisus Writer.
Ulysses free 30 day trial
Another intersting offer for Mac users: Ulysses, a word processor specifically designed for authors. We here at Spire like it a lot. Download the free 30 day trial and see what you think.
Avoid clichés. A free e-book
Take the bull by the horns, stay cool as a cucumber? Confront the dreaded clichés. What they are, why you must avoid them, and how you can do it.
Click here to download.
Mugging the Muse, by Holly Lisle
This long-time best-seller at Booklocker.com is now available as a free download. It contains many of the articles and workshops from Holly's site, plus three articles written especially for the book: My Five Worst Career Mistakes and How You Can Avoid Them, Ten Keys to Designing a Series Character You Can Live With (Forever), and How to Make Every Story Better Than the Last.Unleashing the Ideavirus, by Seth Godin
This is a great book, written by a marketing genius. Unleashing The Idea Virus explains the logic of word-of-mouth advertising and how you can get it working for you. Available for free download in PDF format.
If you'd rather buy the book then you can do so by following the following amazon links:
The Literary Machine
A word processor and ideas organizer especially created especially for authors. PC only, available for free download.
Open Office - the free office suite
Open Office is a free open source alternative to Microsoft Office. We here at Spire use it frequently as it reads some of the more obscure file formats out there. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute. Available for PC, Mac OSX and Linux.
yWriter, free novel writing software
Created by a writer for writers, yWriter is free to download.
Features:
- Organise your novel using a 'project'.
- Add files to the project, each containing a chapter.
- Add a summary to each file, showing the scenes in each chapter.
- Print out summary cards, showing the structure of your novel.
- Display the word count for every file in the project, along with a total.
- Saves a log file every day, showing words per file and the total. (Tracks your progress)
- Saves automatic backups at user-specified intervals.
- Allows multiple scenes within chapters.
- Viewpoint character, goal, conflict and outcome fields for each scene.
- Storyboard view, a visual layout of your work.
- Re-order scenes within chapters.
- Move scenes from one chapter to another.
- Automatic chapter renumbering.
Cute PDF - free pdf creation
This is an interesting tool if you're going for our Print Ready Package. Cute PDF creates pdf files from virtually any Windows Application that can print. Free for personal and commercial use, download here.