{"id":2108,"date":"2012-10-23T12:21:45","date_gmt":"2012-10-23T16:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/?p=2108"},"modified":"2012-10-23T12:21:45","modified_gmt":"2012-10-23T16:21:45","slug":"why-storybundle-and-humblebundle-makes-sense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/why-storybundle-and-humblebundle-makes-sense\/","title":{"rendered":"Why StoryBundle (and HumbleBundle) Makes Sense"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I wrote about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.storybundle.com\" target=\"_blank\">StoryBundle<\/a> a while back. It seemed like a pretty neat idea&#8211; get five or six DRM free books for a price you set, and determine for yourself how much of what you paid should go to the company, the authors, and a charity of their choice, for a limited time. StoryBundle is on their second bundle now, which is a <a href=\"http:\/\/news.cnet.com\/8301-13845_3-57537096-58\/name-your-own-price-for-horrific-e-book-bundle\/?et_mid=586041&amp;rid=233777964\">&#8220;Halloween Horror&#8221; <\/a>bundle that includes titles by Joseph Nassise, Weston Ochse, \u00a0Jon F. Merz, \u00a0among others, and, if you&#8217;re willing to meet a minimum price, two additional books.<\/p>\n<p>I did not try out the first StoryBundle, and I just learned about this one. But not that long ago, <em>Publishers Weekly<\/em> ran an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publishersweekly.com\/pw\/by-topic\/digital\/content-and-e-books\/article\/54401-humble-ebook-bundle-rumbles-along.html\">article<\/a> about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.humblebundle.com\/\">HumbleBundle<\/a>, which sounded like the same kind of thing, I went to the site to see if it was. HumbleBundle is pretty similar&#8211; the difference seems to be that the authors included in StoryBundle&#8217;s bundles are indie authors whose names the average mainstream reader might not recognize, but the authors included in the current HumbleBundle are much more well-known (and are getting a heck of a lot more publicity). Kelly Link, an author I love, contributed two titles to the bundle, and I saw the names of a couple of other authors I had not read but was kind of interested in trying out. So I purchased the HumbleBundle. Thirteen books and comics for whatever I want to pay, with the option to contribute some of the money to the Electronic Frontier Foundation? I&#8217;m there. And it is a good deal not just for me (not just for the price but because I&#8217;m trying new things) but for at least some of the authors of the books in the bundle. I had never read anything by John Scalzi, although I&#8217;d heard his name. His book <em>Old Man&#8217;s War<\/em> was included in the bundle, and it was fantastic. It is, of course, the first book in a series, though, so now I&#8217;m going to have to seek the others out. That works out to be a pretty good strategy! I&#8217;m now reading a book by someone I had never heard of at all, Lauren Beukes, and it&#8217;s amazing. Authors and publishers need to take a close look at how well this model is working. For anyone who isn&#8217;t really well read in a particular genre and is interested in trying it out, this kind of opportunity, either through HumbleBundle or StoryBundle is golden. Over a million people have purchased the HumbleBundle now&#8230; that&#8217;s a lot of customers, and most of them must be satisfied, or people would stop buying the books. \u00a0If you are a horror fan looking for some great Halloween reads, check out the books at StoryBundle.com&#8211; chances are you&#8217;ll find something you like.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wrote about StoryBundle a while back. It seemed like a pretty neat idea&#8211; get five or six DRM free books for a price you set, and determine for yourself how much of what you paid should go to the company, the authors, and a charity of their choice, for a limited time. StoryBundle is<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/why-storybundle-and-humblebundle-makes-sense\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[44,155,656,83,181,1306,1184,1307,1308,407,205,47,130,1183],"class_list":["post-2108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ebooks","tag-halloween","tag-horror-authors","tag-horror-fiction","tag-horror-genre","tag-humblebundle-com","tag-independent-authors","tag-john-scalzi","tag-lauren-beukes","tag-publishers-weekly","tag-publishers","tag-publishing","tag-reading","tag-storybundle-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2108"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2112,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108\/revisions\/2112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}