The other day, I mentioned the Humble Bundle’s plans to expand its e-book offerings. Today it turns out that the Humble Bundle’s closest competitor in the world of e-book bundles has just come out with another one itself. For the next three weeks, StoryBundle is offering its “Epic Fantasy” bundle on a semi-pay-what-you-want basis. The minimum payment is $3 for six DRM-free multiformat e-books, and if you pay at least $12 you get three more.
The base-level donation books are
- The Sacrifice by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
- Spirit Walker by David Farland
- MythWorld by James A. Owen
- The Camelot Papers by Peter David
- The Monarch of the Glen by Neil Gaiman
- Bloodletting by Peter J. Wacks & Mark Ryan
The bonus titles are
- Clockwork Angels by Kevin J. Anderson
- The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson
- The Immortals by Tracy Hickman
Purchasers can pay anywhere from $3 on up, and there is a slider that lets them choose how much money they want to go to the authors and how much they want to go to the web site itself. (The default split is 70/30.) There is also a dropdown menu that will let you donate a fixed 10% of your purchase to the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, Girls Write Now, Mighty Writers, or make no donation.
(Personally, I think the Humble Bundle has a lot better method for controlling the donation amount, where you can adjust exactly how much should go to each entity. If they’re going to put two entities on a slider and have a 10% donation option, they really should put the charity on the slider and let you give 10% to the web site if you want.)
Interesting to see another book by Kevin J. Anderson there. According to my interview with Michael Stackpole, he was the one behind putting together the prior SF bundles. Between this and Publishers Weekly’s revelation that Cory Doctorow was the one who assembled the Humble Bundle’s e-book bundles, it seems like certain authors are playing a major part in getting these things together—much like the way authors are taking their creative fate into their own hands with their self-publishing efforts.
Regardless, there are some great names in this bundle, and $12 for 9 books is not at all a bad deal.
I thought it was well worth it and purchased the bundle last night. Although for me, it was only 8 books. I already own Emperor’s Soul.
Another good bit of marketing here. Many of the books are #1 in a series, so if we like them, we’ll likely go buy the rest of the series.