The most-mentioned books on r/writing

May 22, 2024

Reddit is a social media and news aggregation website that ranks content based on a voting system. People worldwide post content (usually links, but also original content), and other users can “upvote” or “downvote” posts, pushing the most interesting content to the top.

It’s a place where you can find groups of like-minded people. Reddit calls these groups subreddits, and they cover different topics, including niche interests, politics, hobbies, and thousands of other topics people want to talk about.

Since its launch in 2005, the site has become one of the most popular social media sites with millions of monthly active users.

We've processed billions of comments to find the books most mentioned on Reddit.

Table of Contents

The most-mentioned books on r/writing
Our methodology
Who are we

The most-mentioned books on r/writing

Elements of Style	81 users
On Writing	66 users
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers	48 users
Bird by Bird	31 users
The Emotion Thesaurus	29 users
Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need	29 users
Story Engineering	24 users
Story	22 users
The War of Art	21 users
On Writing Well	20 users
How Not to Write a Novel	20 users
The Anatomy of Story	20 users
Reading Like a Writer	19 users
Save The Cat! Writes A Novel	19 users
Understanding Comics	18 users
Techniques of the Selling Writer	18 users
Zen in the Art of Writing	16 users
The Art of Fiction	16 users
Eats, Shoots and Leaves	15 users
Police Procedure and Investigation	14 users
The Elements of Style	14 users
Writing Fiction	13 users
The Writers Journey	13 users
642 Things to Write About	12 users
The Hero with a Thousand Faces	12 users
Plot and Structure	12 users
The 3 A.M. Epiphany	12 users
The Artist's Way	12 users
Writing Tools	11 users
The Elements of Eloquence	11 users
Style	10 users
The Chicago Manual of Style	10 users
Wonderbook	10 users
Writing Fiction	10 users
How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy	10 users
Writing Down the Bones	10 users
20 Master Plots	10 users
Making Comics	9 users
How to Write a Sentence	9 users
Ship of Theseus	9 users
Screenplay	9 users
Stein On Writing	8 users
House of Leaves	8 users
Building Great Sentences	8 users
The Sense of Style	8 users
The Art Of Dramatic Writing	8 users
Steering the Craft	8 users
The Emotional Craft of Fiction	8 users
Alan Moore's Writing For Comics Volume 1	8 users
Wired for Story	8 users
Story Genius	8 users
How to Read Literature Like a Professor	7 users
Several Short Sentences About Writing	7 users
Immediate Fiction	7 users
Understanding Show, Don't Tell	7 users
Hooked	7 users
Plotto	7 users
What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers	6 users
Creating Short Fiction	6 users
On Killing	6 users
Soon I Will Be Invincible	6 users
Writing Fiction For Dummies	6 users
The First Five Pages	6 users
The Art of Styling Sentences	6 users
Sin and Syntax	6 users
Scene and Structure	6 users
Artful Sentences	6 users
Outlining Your Novel	6 users
Structuring Your Novel	6 users
Characters and Viewpoint	6 users
On Writing Well, 25th Anniversary	5 users
Garner's Modern American Usage	5 users
Daily Rituals	5 users
Making Shapely Fiction	5 users
The Making of a Story	5 users
Writing for Story	5 users
The Copyeditor's Handbook	5 users
The Blade Itself	5 users
The Name of the Wind	5 users
Steal Like an Artist	5 users
Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing	5 users
The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics	5 users
Invisible Ink	5 users
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time	5 users
Writing Movies for Fun and Profit	5 users
Take Off Your Pants!	5 users
Story Structure Architect	5 users
The Portable MFA in Creative Writing	5 users
2011 writer's market	5 users
Writing for Emotional Impact	5 users
2013 writer's market	5 users
The Book of Ralph	5 users
Creating Character Arcs	5 users
If You Want to Write	5 users
Shadow and Bone	4 users
Everything Men Know About Women	4 users
Elements of Fiction Writing	4 users
How to Write Dazzling Dialogue	4 users
Moon People	4 users
2,000 to 10,000	4 users

Our methodology

Book mentions are found by checking every reddit comment for links to Amazon, Goodreads, Google Books, and O'Rielly Media. Non-link mentions are too tricky to parse in an unbiased way: books with short, simple titles like The Road get massively under- or over-counted.

When a user mentions the same book multiple times in the same subreddit, we only count the top-voted comment. This curbs users shilling a particular book, and gives a more representative feel for an entire subreddit.

Who are we

Find accountability partners, and study online courses & books with other learners. Moocable helps you find your next course/book/problem set, and lets you find study partners.

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