For Your Edification or Enjoyment: If You Absolutely Must, a Free ebook on How to Make It as a Writer

If you’ve followed my work you will know that I am frequently critical of writers, I am often despondent over the state of the economy of writing, and I typically counsel young people that being a professional writer is too fraught financially to be a good idea. But I am also a fanatical believer in the power and value of writing, and a lover of the profession of writer. Recently I shared some dark thoughts on the state of the industry, and it provoked a good deal of angst. That has motivated me to prepare a new ebook, titled “If You Absolutely Must,” about how to go about the business of surviving as a writer of argumentative nonfiction. You can find it at my personal homepage in .pdf, .epub. and .mobi file formats.

Though the text is largely drawn from previously-published work, it also contains a lot of original material, as well as editing and reworking of what’s old. There are essayistic sections about the profession, a long bulleted list of practical nuts-and-bolts advice, a sample of what I like to think of as my writing at its best, and the text of my book proposal, which successfully sold to a Big Five publisher for a good advance. The text is about 50 pages, but the last several are the text of its license. The ebook is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, which means that you may download it and share it as you see fit, but may not alter or use it for commercial purposes.

This work is free to download and distribute, but if you would like to tip me for my work, you can do so here.

Edit: Fixed typo and added stable .epub and .mobi links.