Free Fiction for your EBook Reader

What’s free isn’t worth it, right?

Wrong!

There’s plenty of free fiction available on the Internet that’s actually very good – if not excellent – so you needn’t burn your hard-earned moolah for quality lit from Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo, etc. to keep your ebook reader busy.

Here’s a brief overview of sites from which I’ve downloaded files (short stories) prior to converting them to a format my reader accepts:

Writer’s Type (writerstype.com)

This site invites writers to compete for Amazon Gift Coupons every quarter. Contests are for first chapters, shorts, and flash fiction, and the winners and five runners-up in each category are displayed on the site.  Click on ‘Previous Winners’ to see the stories and then choose the ones you want by opening them on your computer, selecting them with your mouse, and copy-pasting them in Word before saving the file.

The Short Story (theshortstory.net)  

Not a lot of free fiction available here, but what’s on offer is top-grade.  The site displays First-, Second-, and Third Prize annual winners (shorts) for the years 2011-2013. To download, simply open the story and click on the save/download icon.    

Winning Writers (winningwriters.com)

This site offers serious prize money for poetry, short story, and essay competitions, so it’s a given that the winners are worth a read. The site is rich in content and worth exploring.  As none of the files are downloadable in the strict technical sense, you need to go through the copy-paste routine explained earlier.

Narrative Magazine (narrativemagazine.com)

This site has more than enough to help you tank up your reader for the whole season. Generous cash prizes are offered to fiction, non-fiction, and poetry winners, and all the winning works are accessible to site members. Membership is free, so sign up and harvest truckloads of fine fiction.

Project Gutenberg (gutenberg.net.au)

This Australia based site offers tons of full-length ebooks by famous writers, in a range of categories: crime, romance, children’s classics, poetry, westerns, biography, cookery and home science, to name just a few. There are also helpful guidelines for downloads and conversions. 

East of the Web (eastoftheweb.com)

East of the Web showcases fiction by grey eminences like Chesterton, Maupassant, Wilde, and Doyle (among others), as well as young adult fiction by contemporary writers that’s pretty good.  You can either copy-paste or go to the App Store and download the East of the Web Short Stories App onto your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. This free app helps you organise your fiction in a library for easy access.

How to format stories for your ebook reader

Where sites do not offer downloadable files or applications like the one mentioned above, the copy-paste approach will do just fine:

a) Navigate to the story of your choice and open it.

b) Select, using the mouse, and then copy-paste onto an open Word file.

c) Repeat with all the stories, pasting one after another, but always on a new page, using MS Word’s page break function.

d) Give the file a name and save it.

d) Visit calibre-ebook.com and download the Calibre ebook manager for free. This is a professional yet simple-to-use program that allows you to create your own ebooks (including cover and contents page) from Word files you've created. I’ve been using this program to create ebooks for my Paperwhite, and it works just fine.

So… load up your ebook reader and read happily ever after!