Wednesday 10 October 2012

Bargain Books | The Humble Bundle

You've heard of the Humble Bundles, haven't you?

The first bundle was made available in May 2010, and it featured six indie video games, including Aquaria, World of Goo and Samorost 2. You could pay whatever you could afford in exchange for download codes for the whole lot. It was a tremendous success, raising more than $1m — of which a large part was donated to charity.

In the years since (both of them!) there have been countless other bundles - so very many that I admit I had rather lost track - including a Humble Music Bundle, and as of yesterday, the first Humble eBook Bundle. Thus this post's existence.

It features an astonishing array of novels and short story collections:
  • Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
  • Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link
  • Invasion by Mercedes Lackey
  • Pump Six & Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi
  • Magic For Beginners by Kelly Link
  • Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow
And all of these eBooks could be yours for the grand price of... whatever you have sitting in your PayPal account! Or less!


Or, of course, more. In fact, as an added incentive, if you donate more than the average amount - which is hovering right around $12 as of 2PM today - your bundle will come complete with two other eBooks, namely Old Man's War by John Scalzi and Signal to Noise, the graphic novel by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean.

Considering how much a copy of that last alone would set you back, the Humble eBook Bundle represents such bang for your buck that this immediately qualifies as the bestest Bargain Books post ever. I've bought the lot for the cost of a new hardcover here in the UK: £20.

Seemed like the least I could do, really.

But you can choose how much you want to pay! You can choose, too, how your money gets divvied up between the authors, the organisers and the three charities the Humble eBook Bundle is supporting: that is to say Child's Play, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the SFWA. You can even gift a bundle to a loved one. Given such a good cause, I'm sorely tempted to do just that.

In 24 hours, the first Humble eBook Bundle has already raised around a quarter of a million dollars, and that's awesome. But I bet we can do better! Do the world a good turn, why don't you — and get some awesome ePUBs for your trouble.

What's not to like?

4 comments:

  1. I just bought the Bundle this morning. There was no way I was going to pass up a deal like that!

    ReplyDelete
  2. So many bundles these days, I love it. Interesting to see that Windows users have the lowest average even here.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Isn't it, though? And the same goes for the game bundles Humble have published, I see.

      So either Windows attracts cheap bastards, or makes us thus — perhaps because of the exorbitant cost of that OS versus the others? I wonder...

      Delete
    2. I think non-Windows users (let's say Mac and iPhone users specifically) are much more used to paying for things, microtransactions, buying apps, etc.

      Windows has no end to free software available online if you don't feel like paying for things like Photoshop etc. (though I'd agree that 80% of the free Windows software out there is total crap) -- and I don't mean strictly through piracy either. More like GIMP and other free mock versions of things.

      The Android market (Google Play) is mostly free apps with a spattering of paid or premium apps (though most of those still have free ad-supported versions, or what have you).

      Delete