Free stuff is great. I know I’m always looking for a good deal, but unfortunately free sometimes doesn’t really mean free. Instead, free means: Creative Commons, but requires an attribution, or Royalty-free or free-but-only-if-you-give-away-your-email. Occasionally, you can find free stuff for your website or creative projects.
I am a penny-pincher. I look up budget meals, and I get sucked into those Pinterest posts about saving money, DIY projects and travel for cheap! (Travel with one bag? That’s me. I’ll do it!)
Here are my resources for free stuff. Updated February 2024
Free Ebooks and audiobooks
Have you tried the free audiobooks from LibriVox? Are you desperate for some sugary sweet fairy tales? Try Andrew Lang’s Blue Fairy Book.
LibriVox’s catalog lets you search by Author, Title, Genre/Subject, or Language. You can find Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, and Adventures of Pinocchio. There are dramatic readings, fantastic fiction, and historical fiction. Although, if you ask me it’s all historical since there are books in the public domain.
Likewise, you can find ebooks for free from the Gutenberg Project. If you haven’t read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum, you can get it right now. What about some Irish Fairy tales? Or The House of Wolflings by William Morris. (No idea if it’s any good. The title was intriguing.)
You can browse by bookshelves (basically by genre) or see the most popular downloads. Or try the random book search, if you’re feeling adventurous.
They offer you downloads in different formats, like EPUB, Kindle, plain text, or you can read online, which is especially nice if you want to preview a book first. They have Mary Shelley’s classic gothic novel, Frankenstein. Pride and Prejudice is their most popular download! This is the place for free ebooks from the Gutenberg Project.
Free Images
This is a site that links you to a variety of other free image sites. They’re all connected, and here I’m connecting you to them. Crazy.
My personal favorites are Pixabay for illustrations or patterns and vector graphics and Unsplash for photography.
Free resources for Blogs and Websites from Awwwards.com.
They have resources for free fonts, free backgrounds, free ebooks, and various other resources for designing, like getting vintage background vectors. A lot of free website stuff is just waiting for you to go out there and take them.
Free Design Programs and Other Software
Free open-source software is a lifesaver for me. The people who design these and then give them away are amazing. AlternativeTo.net is a website that gives you all kinds of alternative software options. This is where I go if I want to find a different option. Keep in mind you get what you pay for with these. They’re free, they work, but they’re not the highest quality.
Designing
For photo editing I’ve used Pixlr.
The free version of Pixlr is only available on-line or they have a free app for your phone. I use both.
For digital drawing, and to design vector graphics try Inkscape. I used it to create my first book cover and there are expert tutorials on YouTube to help. For other options, you could try creating shapes with Vectezzy’s Editor. Or even use Figma.
I love using Figma for mood boards. You can also create shapes, use their pen tool, and export your creations as SVG, PNG, JPEG image files, or even a PDF. Use Figma to customize icons on your website or jazz up a blog page.
For ideas and quick graphic design, I use Canva.
For an alternative to Adobe InDesign, I used Scribus for print layout, but it wasn’t the best alternative. I managed, but it was slow when it had to work with hundreds of pages of text. So, I will probably search for alternatives if I can’t get InDesign to make print books.
To create my ebook I used Amazon’s Kindle Create.
For word processing, to write my stories, I use Google Documents, but Libre Office is an open-source alternative.
For 3D design and animation, Blender is the best free option. There are hundreds of free tutorials and communities of artists. You could get lost looking through all the art on Artstation. For more inspiration try the website called This is Colossal, which features artists around the world doing amazing things.
Typography
For a font maker that lets you make your handwriting into a fond, try Calligraphr. For other free fonts, you can search Creative Blog’s Typography pages. They often list free fonts. Remember to make sure the font is available for commercial and personal use. You can go straight to a font resource like ‘Font Squirrel’ too.
Animation and Audio
To create my book trailer I used Powtoons. That was an interesting experiment, and I plan to try some alternatives for my next book trailer.
For free sound effects and audio try Freesound.org. There is also the Free Music Archive, which has Creative Commons tracks for download. You’ll need to check if there are any restrictions, some can’t be used commercially, and some can’t be used without attribution.
AI-Generated Art
ChatGPT arrived in 2023, and it took over everything. AI image generation exploded, because it suddenly could make beautiful art and tech companies are still competing to make it profitable.
I love the idea of using words to instantly create images. I’ve used AI images all over my blog, making book cover images and even Ads and abstract stuff. Abstracts are my favorite. Your prompt sounds utterly nonsensical, but the AI takes and sometimes you end up with a genuinely stunning piece of art. AI art from the masses. (And unfortunately, a lot of the training data was taken from real artists, so don’t use AI as an excuse not to support real people making art. That said, AI generation is a tool and one I plan to use to make myself more creative.)
Have you made friends with your Chat GTP robot? What do you use it for? Marketing advise? SEO strategies? Try giving it ideas for writing your author bio. Did you know I live in the enchanted, magical, mystical land of the Pacific Northwest? Yes, my robot friend thinks I do.
If you want to create characters using AI, try the fascinating Artbreeder. It lets you mix images and fine-tune the results. Their remixing program also lets you look at the genealogical-style history of images, so you can find the perfect parents for your new imaged character. (Perhaps you can create a character for your next book, like I did for the Thorn Path.)
Truly Free Image Generators
I’ve used Craiyon.com to generate multiple images at a time. Some of them feel a little dull, or uninspired. Microsoft’s Co-Pilot makes it easy to generate since you access it through Bing. You can have simple chats or make strange fairy landscapes and then put them into ads. Perchance.org lets you generator stuff for free from their homepage. Just input your prompt and generate.
Prompt: an artist’s easel set up on a rugged beach during an ominous storm
Open AI has Dall-E and wants you to sign up, but if you have their Chat robot already, maybe it’s not a problem. My suggestion is to try some of these amazing AI image sites and if you like what you see, sign up and explore.
I am still researching AI Video Generation and have only found them locked behind signups, but I tried the Canva option and it was fine. I think I’m too poetic and sometimes prompts are better when they’re simpler.
Prompt for CANVA video: an artist’s easel set up on a rugged rocky beach during an ominous storm, waves roll over the rocks, splashes in the air, the clouds churn as the wind spins them.
I’ll add more free stuff when I find them. Until next time, happy creating!
updated 2-2024