THE EDINBURGH International Book Festival has got a fight on its hands this summer. A literary festival which costs nothing to attend and doesn't pay its performing writers a penny is to launch at the same time as the capital's world-famous event.

The West Port Book Festival has already poached some of the literary talents that are also to appear at the international book festival, including Ian Rankin, Ali Smith and AL Kennedy.

The enthusiasm with which the free book festival has been welcomed, coupled with the boom in free events across the rest of Edinburgh's festivals, has led some in the arts world to suggest that in the face of an economic downturn and spiralling ticket prices, free events will no longer be sniffed at.

Ticket sales remain robust for the international, Fringe and book festivals, but established events and venues are facing stiff competition from the growing number of free festivals.

The inaugural West Port Book Festival will run from August 14 to 17 in an area of Edinburgh more famously known as the "pubic triangle" for its cluster of Soho-style strip clubs.

All the events will take place in the gaggle of eccentric second-hand book stores that dot the area.

"It's so important it's free", said Hannah Adcock, 27, the festival director. "I want to attract all sorts of people who might not have that much money floating around, especially locals who have been excluded by the huge beast that the festival has become."

The festival, whose programme is to be launched next week, is aiming for a more offbeat feel compared to the stuffy atmosphere of Charlotte Square.

Ian Rankin will talk about comic books in an old timber yard transformed by performance artists, Booker Prize nominee Ali Smith will discuss American writer Carson McCullers while surrounded by stuffed animals, and pubs will host magic shows with the Meadows transformed into a Victorian fair.

Despite sharing some of the same names as the international book festival, Peggy Hughes, the programme director, said the West Port Book Festival did not really consider itself a rival.

"I think we've got complementary remits," she said. "What we're doing is a bit more random. We're being compared, which is wonderful, but we've got a tiny budget and a tiny amount of time."

The poet Douglas Dunn, who will appear at Edinburgh Books in the shadow of a stuffed water buffalo, said he welcomed the low-budget approach.

"While the Edinburgh International Book Festival has been a howling success, it's all about the flash end of the book industry and one bookseller," he said. "It is a very broad church, it has writers of all kinds, but the general public tend to be suckers for celebrity books: books by film stars, TV presenters, familiar faces from the box."

The Edinburgh International Book Festival congratulated West Port for its impressive line-up and said it sees West Port as a fringe event to what it has been doing for 25 years.

"We think there's always more room for book festivals," said a spokeswoman. "It's for a slightly different audience and a slightly different set of authors. It complements rather than contrasts."

Meanwhile, other festivals are seeing an increase in the events being offered for nothing.

The vast majority of the relatively new Edinburgh Art Festival's programme is free, while the Fringe has 350 free shows, an increase of 45 on last year.

The Free Fringe, set up as a reaction to spiralling ticket prices and artists having to pay thousands of pounds to mount shows in Edinburgh, has almost doubled in size this year with 113 shows and 1971 performances.