Humble eBook Bundle Lets You Pay What You Want For eBooks 103
Following on the success of the various Humble Bundles for DRM-free video games, the organization has just launched its first Humble eBook Bundle. It includes Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow, Pump Six by Paolo Bacigalupi, Zoo City by Lauren Beukes, Invasion by Mercedes Lackey, Stranger Things Happen, and Magic for Beginners, both by Kelly Link. If you choose to pay more than the average (about $11 at this writing), you also get Old Man's War by John Scalzi, and Signal to Noise, by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean. The books are available in PDF, MOBI, and ePub formats, without DRM. As with all the Humble Bundles, you can choose how much you'd like to pay, and how the proceeds are split between any of the authors and/or among three charities.
I'm a gamer at heart (Score:4, Funny)
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Achievement Unlocked: Completionist! Got to the end of the book without skipping the boring bit in the middle.
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Like Neil Gaiman and John Scalzi?
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Because obviously Paolo Bacigalupi sucks sooooo sooo badly....
Ah, slashdot cowards making me use the keyboard...
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Both Clancy and Gaiman know their shit. It's a matter of taste at best if you think higher of Clancy. I'd tend to think Gaiman is a wee bit more flexible than either Clancy or Patterson.
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I'd tend to think Gaiman is a wee bit more flexible than either Clancy or Patterson.
So does Amanda Palmer. /rimshot
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:O Hero of the day post, indeed. That's a rimshot and a fanfare, in quick succession. With a big honking slam on a tam-tam (it's not a gong!).
Re:I'm a gamer at heart (Score:4, Informative)
Baen already has a DRM free digital library and has since before the whole eBook thing ever caught on.
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Like Stephen King and Orson Scott Card.
He said real, not lame crap.
Bet you think Michael Bay is the greatest director ever, don't you?
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Michael Bay? Pfffff. Uwe Boll is and always will be the best!
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as long as they aren't the idiots that cried piracy over the lendlink BS [slashdot.org] I'm willing to give them a look.
Just remember, almost any famous author had to start out as an unknown. The terms associated with this adventure seems to be right for checking them out.
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Well, I'll diss him. His writing sucks. Its brittney spears for nerds in book form.
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Like every writer I've seen listed so far, they put out some good and they put out some crap.
Except that Salinger guy. Every word is pure shit.
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Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.
(I have never read any of his work, by the way.)
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He said "His writing sucks." Since I am reading his writing, for consistency's sake, it should be held to the same standards.
He used the wrong spelling for "it's," spelled the singer's first name wrong, and didn't capitalize either name.
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maybe I should be. I speell things with as much respect as they deserve. Its a slight nod to my Joycean tendencies.
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Awesome. With a single comment I've equaled the litterary output of Gaimen. MIssion Completed. Now to retire ot Splain.
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I want the Humble Hooker Bundle.
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Cheap hookers from foreign countries whom Notch already paid $10k for and about 250,000 people before you have had for a buck?
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Sure, why not (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been needing some good locally-saved reading material in between reading new 40K rules and my fantasy author of choice. I'm willing to back this on spec and hopefully it'll take off (maybe with certain bundles focused on certain types of books, such as sci-fi, or psychology).
Re:Pay what you want? Not quite. (Score:4, Informative)
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1. EVERYBODY goes through a payment processor.
2. Performing the "checkout" yourself is not cheap. Storing and processing credit card data requires not-cheap security measures.
3. Going directly through a first-party processor is not cheap. There are rather large minimum cash flow requirements, which are simply infeasible for "pay what you want", especially when you're only selling something periodically.
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IMO they should, as a nerd backed enterprise, have build at least a basic parser for simple formulas into the payment system. nothing fancy obviously you need to get a float to the payment op but doing some simple parsing and supporting predefined constants (pi,fi, e) can be easily done even from the frontend.
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Re:Pay what you want? Not quite. (Score:5, Funny)
Let's see, I like Arthur C. Clarke, so I'll pay $20.01: "2 0 . 0 !" (accidental shift+1)
Oops, now my account is overdrawn by $2.3 * 10 ^ 18...
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No, not at all actually. People will ever only notice the big fat letters printed on the confirmation dialogue so as long that one is a decimal number you are sure that:
A) people will be warned of the amount they are preparing to donate
B) nerds will be reassured that their esoteric formula got actually accepted by the thick goggled accountant.
Also if you had any success in that sort of stuff you learn to double check with insane donations, because that is the smart money way anyway.
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You should be able to see a handful of reasons why that would be a very bad idea. Aside from the extremely momentary novelty that you can do it, there are so many potential problems with that which would make it nothing more than a flat danger.
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No I don't. Sorry to burst your bubble there but what were you thinking about?
Obviously you aren't dealing with that sort of data on the payment framework, everything is frontend. So where exactly lies the trouble?
Books worth more than games (Score:4, Interesting)
Seems that book bundles are valued 50% higher than game bundles... nowhere near the same quantity sold yet, though :(
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In every Humble Game Bundle that I recall, the spread was much wider, especially for Linux users. While I suppose part of it is that we're so happy to support games that support Linux, I wonder what else might be at work here.
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Who actually buys Wjndows separately? The cost of Winnows when bought with an OEM system is effectively free due to the discounts and money made by installing crapware in the system.
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I bought Windows 7 OEM, since I build my own PCs. Don't worry, it dual-boots Linux Mint 12.
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As of right now, something else is going on that's strange. Here's the OS breakdown:
In every Humble Game Bundle that I recall, the spread was much wider, especially for Linux users. While I suppose part of it is that we're so happy to support games that support Linux, I wonder what else might be at work here.
Some of us Linux users already have John Scalzi's Old Man's War[*] and some edition of Neil Gaiman's Signal to Noise. So what's the point of spending extra to get something you've already got?
[*] And the other stuff by Scalzi set in the same story-line: Zoe's Tale and The Ghost Brigades. I also have three other Scalzi books, and one in the shopping basket at Amazon. This humble ebook bundle is a matter of too little or too late for bibliophiles.
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This humble ebook bundle is a matter of too little or too late for bibliophiles.
Really? So any book-lover will have got/read most of the things here? I conside
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Agreed on the variety issue also.
I checked your profile at shelfari, and you appear to read a lot of the science fiction that I also like. So I suspect you might enjoy Scalzi's Old Man's War and its offshoots. I was also unaware of that book until I came across this image [coolinfographics.com] of the alleged top 100 books in Fantasy (ugh) and Science Fiction (yea). I already had nearly all of the science fiction side of the chart, so Scalzi was quite an unexpected find.
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With these books, there is no such OS limitation.
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Average is statistically meaningless. What is the median? SD? skew?
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You'll never see those because it would destroy the Humble Bundle people's propaganda. I bet with the outliers removed that the Linux average would be much lower.
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Yes, them releasing better info would answer all. They won't do so since the current average serves their agenda. Anything that would serve to downplay that would be hidden.
Re:Books worth more than games (Score:4, Insightful)
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there's likely a $.01 out there
isn't $.01 more like -$5 when you accept credit cards?
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Not really. There are two pay scales on which credit card companies charge fees to merchants, either a flat fee per transaction or a percentage. (Very rarely both.)
The flat fee is usually on the order of 50 cents per transaction. Possibly closer to 30 cents, I'm not exactly sure. Percentage is usually something like 5%. Both are higher for Amex and Discover. (One of a few reasons they're less often accepted.)
The reason gas stations and convenience stores often don't accept credit cards for sales less
Re:Books worth more than games (Score:5, Interesting)
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Books? These are some readable computer files, not books.
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They are ebooks, which is a book in an electronic form. Saying they are "some readable computer files, not books" is like saying MP3s are "some readable computer files, not music".
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Stranger Things Happen (Score:5, Informative)
I bought Kelly Link's Stranger Things Happen on dead tree media a while back, and I thought it was fantastic. This bundle is worth it for that title alone.
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The downmod is probably more a matter of your suggesting a book isn't worth money just because you can get it for free.
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And that the book is available under CC somehow makes the bundle worth less?
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The OP stated that the bundle was worth it for that book alone. I said it wasn't because the book is free.
Next: Humble Development Bundle (Score:3, Funny)
Pay what you want! If you paid for web development separately, it could cost thousands or even millions of dollars for larger corporate sites!
You choose how your purchase is divided: Developers, Charities, or even Us!
Can't wait for the upcoming "Humble Education Bundle" and "Humble Grocery Bundle". This is the future.
Losing the roots (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as I can tell, these are all popular and published authors and books. Shouldn't a Humble eBook Bundle consist of new and unknown authors, in the same spirit of Humble Indie Bundle?
Except for one of those Humble Indie Bundles that included Psychonauts. Great game? Sure, but hardly Indie.
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Take a look at http://storybundle.com/ if that's what you're interested in.
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Neat! I will! Wish I'd learned about that site for their first bundle now...
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It's been just "Humble Bundle" for a while now, they dropped the 'Indie' part... somewhere around bundle number 4 I think? Personally, I buy them to support the charities first, the developers second, and the business plan third. For some reason, Child's Play has captured my attention in a way no other charity has, perhaps because playing video games was such a huge part of how I dealt with difficulties in my own childhood. Give the kids some games to play, help them be happy for a few hours that might o
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Re:Losing the roots (Score:4, Informative)
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If anything they should include 2 well known authors and then 4-5 others that are relatively unknown that would be of a similar style or in the same genre. That would make the package more interesting and better expose talented but unknown authors.
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I thought I was the only one who noticed that (Psychonauts being a publisher-backed game on an indie bundle). Not that I was complaining since it was DRM-free and ported to Linux. In fact, I'd actually be quite happy if we had more big titles from publishers appear on the Humble Indie Bundles. You'd have to rename the title though, but imagine Deus Ex - Human Revolution appearing as a Steam-free DRM-free download with a Linux version as well...
Kelly Link (Score:4, Interesting)
Just to say Kelly Link's are more then just DRM free, they are CC BY-NC-SA:
http://smallbeerpress.com/wp-content/uploads/Kelly_Link_Magic_for.htm [smallbeerpress.com]
http://smallbeerpress.com/wp-content/uploads/Kelly_Link_Stranger_Things.htm [smallbeerpress.com]
And Cory Doctorow's is at least CC BY-NC-ND:
http://craphound.com/pc/Cory_Doctorow_-_Pirate_Cinema.html [craphound.com]
Once again Linux users (Score:2)
donate higher amounts.
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I don't get people's fascination with these crappy little things that won't even let you leaf through a book
Why would I want to leaf through a book when I can perform an instantaneous search, jump directly to any bookmark or instantly open a book at any page?
or do any of the number of things that make dead trees so much more valuable than digital ink.
Such as?
"But I can carry around hundreds of books in my purse/backpack!" Good for you. Now read all those books at once. You can't? Oh, then what's the point of doing so?
The same point as being able to carry around more music than you can listen to in one sitting. Choice and convenience. If I get an urge to read something, I can pop it right up. If I need to reference something, I can pop that right up too.
Are you homeless and unable to store books anywhere? No?
No, but some of us live in apartments, studios or houses that are not large enough to fit an entire library and s
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Sorry, I don't have and won't have one of the little crappy e-reader devices where I can't even read a fucking book as intended.
You mean a computer? Because they read eBooks as well.
Oh, then what's the point of doing so? Are you homeless and unable to store books anywhere? No?
Then where's the advantage?
Clearly you've never moved your books out of your mother's basement. Once is all it will take to make you appreciate not having to haul seven bookcases-worth to a new home (or even just move them because of a backed-up drain [fbcdn.net]).
Now that the tech is finally usable, and certain readers have backlights (so you can read in bed with someone cuddled up against you asleep), they really are nifty little devices. Especially since I'm out of space for more booksh
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An index/ToC.
eBooks have those too, you know. Even better, eBook ToC and indexes can be linked directly to the material that they reference.
Physical bookmarks
How many physical bookmarks can you realistically stuff into a paper book though? With an eBook, I can create as many as I need.
Pages are numbered, you know.
Pick up a book and instantly open it to, say, page 392 without having to flip through a bunch of pages looking for the right one. With an eBook, I can type in "392" and have the page up right away.
Music isn't as consuming as a book. You can jump around a bunch of music at random, listening to different artists and songs, and thus the "music library" makes more sense. A single book is more linear and even if you read several books at once, it takes time and you don't need more than a handful of books.
That is only true if you're reading novels and only if you s
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I think he's referring to the time Amazon deleted copies of 1984 and Animal Farm [nytimes.com], ironically enough. Amazon had sold a version to which it didn't have the rights, so when it discovered the error, it deleted everyone's copies and refunded the cash. While Amazon later promised to never do it again [nytimes.com], they do have the capability to do so, which makes people understandably nervous. That is one of several reasons I went with a Nook instead of a Kindle - while B&N probably has the same capability, at least