The Writer’s E-handbook is a fairly comprehensive tool on what writers should do while they work toward becoming published and hopefully successful. The book does not sugarcoat much, nor does it pretend that everyone can receive the same measure of success as John Green or Steven King. It does push the idea that writers can see a certain measure of success if they constantly work toward improving their craft and themselves. The Writer’s E-handbook does not include grammar tips or writing strategies. It does not teach the reader how to write dialogue more believably or create a fantastical world. The point of this book is not to make you better at writing but to make you a better writer.

The Writer’s E-handbook is divided into three parts. “Part One: Learning The Craft” is all about what tools a writer has at his/her disposal to improve their craft. It is a guide of workshops, conferences, MFA programs, and much more. The section first explains what each of these tools is and helps the reader to decide which is the most useful for them; then it gives a list of examples of each. The list isn’t all-encompassing but it is fairly expansive. There is a lot of really good information in this chapter but it also seems to be targeted to an older audience than myself. If you are in college and don’t have much money you’ll probably struggle scrounging up enough cash for a workshop but eventually it would probably be a good investment.

“Part Two: Writing Life” is all about what a writer needs to do to garner attention. It uses a lot of information that I’d already heard before but adds in quite a bit on its own. The idea of course is that authors now need to create our own audiences and there are many ways to go about doing this. The book explains about going digital and blogging or using social media or both. It also talks about public readings where you can share what you’ve written with an eager audience. The only problem with these readings is that they are almost exclusively in larger cities, at least as far the as the book seems to explain. After doing a little research I couldn’t find one anywhere near where I lived which was pretty disappointing. Again this chapter is packed with good but sometimes irrelevant or inaccessible information.

“Part Three: Publish Your Work” is the final part in the book (there is an appendix) and the title makes it seem like it’s talking about publishing your book (which to a point it is) but it focuses more on publishing in magazines and entering contests. The chapters explain the markets for certain genres of writing and gives extensive lists of the magazines in these genres. The chapters eventually turn into getting your book published but it emphasizes that you should probably complete the preceding steps before trying to publish. It lists benefits and faults of each type of publishing (publishing with a big name, publishing with an indie name, self-publishing, licensed writing, and book packaging) and leaves it up to the reader to make the decision (although it does push toward going a more conventional route and avoiding self-publishing except for specific cases). Very briefly at the end of the chapter if gives a small note about agents. I think I found this chapter the most beneficial because it isn’t exclusive to a specific audience. The information in this chapter helps anyone that reads it. This isn’t to say that the information in previous sections was useless or unimportant, because it wasn’t. The first and second part are difficult to pay for if you’re a college student (which I am) and gain access to if you live in a remote small town away from inhabited populations (which I do).

The appendix is very short and has some good information but it’s pretty much targeted toward specific audiences. It’s easy to skip around in the appendix because it’s clear what can be useful to the reader and what won’t be. The sample contracts and cover letter were really interesting. The appendix is really just a bunch of information that I guess he couldn’t fit anywhere else in the book.

Overall I would recommend this book to an emerging author if they were looking for something to pick up. The book compiles some really great information all in one place and can be useful even if you don’t use all of the resources immediately. The author is aware of the different age and skill level of his readers and generally tries to be neutral. Obviously if you were looking for something that helped teach you how to write this is not the book for you. I believe that every author could eventually benefit from reading this book.

There are some small issues I had with this book. The first issue was that there was a typo or small grammatical mistake every other page (or at least it felt like it). I could easily get over this because I understand that not only is it likely that there will be typos in a work that long it would be very impressive if the book was without flaws. There were more than any other published book I’ve read and if it bothers you that much then it’s probably best to stay away. The second issue was with the video links. In a perfect world I would have liked the videos to be embedded so that they didn’t have to buffer before I watched them but that would have been a nightmare to download (and maybe also to make I’m not sure). I understood that that was unlikely but what I did not like was where the video links sent me. The pages didn’t have mobile versions (I was reading on a tablet) and it made them difficult to manage. Eventually I just gave up on watching the videos entirely even though they were pretty interesting. This was very irritating to me and I think it really detracted from the experience. The third issue I have covered early in this review: the fact that some of the information could not be used by everyone who read the book. This isn’t the authors fault so I don’t blame him but I did have a problem with it. The fourth issue is that it is only in e-book form. I understand with all the links and videos that the book was made e-book out of necessity but I prefer to have a hard-copy in my hands. The e-book makes it less portable, you can only have it on one device and the device I chose did not belong to me. True this is my own fault but I didn’t have much choice in the matter. It was either my laptop (which is unwieldy to lug around) or my phone (which is too small for reasonable use) or the tablet (which did not belong to me).

The Writer’s E-handbook is a very good tool that can be used countless times during an author’s attempt toward publication. It is a quick and easy read. Jotham Burrello is very conversational in his writing and makes everything easy to understand. If you’re on the fence hopefully this review can push you over it because this is a great book to have.