Day: October 9, 2012

If it’s not obvious, then, well. I don’t know what to tell you.

Also, hello, I’m here in Austin. Keeping it weird, as instructed.

Hey, folks! I’m a participant in the Humble eBook Bundle, which introduces folks to some great science fiction and fantasy, all DRM-free, while also contributing to charities. The book I have as part of it is Old Man’s War, and other authors participating include Cory Doctorow, Kelly Link, Neil Gaiman and Paolo Bacigalupi. I’m going to go ahead and cut and paste the press release below, which pretty much explains everything. If you’re interested (and you should be), click that link above.

And yes, before you ask, I’ll be buying a bundle myself. As it happens, I don’t have an official DRM-free copy of Old Man’s War yet. Seems like a good way to get one, you know?

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The Humble eBook Bundle is a pay-what-you-want promotion featuring eight amazing literary works from a prodigious league of award-winning authors.  For two weeks, fans can pay whatever price they want to support the following artists and receive:

• Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow, an intense story of youthful techno-defiance
• Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi, a hard-hitting collection of 11 impactful stories
• Zoo City by Lauren Beukes, an alternate Earth mystical science fiction tale
• Invasion: The Secret World Chronicle by Mercedes Lackey, Steve Libby, Dennis Lee, and Cody Martin, a modern military superhero saga packed with bonus content
• Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link, a delightful fantasy collection of 11 stories
• Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link, the cross-genre follow-up to Stranger Things Happen

If a buyer decides to pay more than the average price for the bundle, they will also receive:

• Old Man’s War by John Scalzi, a science fiction war epic
• Signal to Noise by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, an ethereal graphic novel of a man’s last days

All of the books are available completely DRM-free for a wide range of eBook readers, mobile devices, and desktop computers.  We’ve also been working hard to make sure all the books are available in PDF, ePub (open ebook standard), and MOBI (Amazon Kindle) formats.

Customers can optionally allocate a part (or all) of their purchase to three fantastic charities:

• The Electronic Frontier Foundation (Internet freedom non-profit)
• The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (writers advocacy non-profit)
• Child’s Play Charity (providing for kids in hospitals in the form of technology and games)

To date, we have sixteen successful promotions under our belt, and the generous and unparalleled contributions of bundle buyers have added up to more than $7,250,000 for charity!  We’re immensely proud to watch as this amount continues to climb with each bundle.

I joined the WordPress VIP service four years ago as of yesterday, after a couple of years of continual frustration with how people were able to access Whatever, and also how I was able to handle the back end of it on my own. In the four years since I joined WordPress VIP, I really can’t remember a single time I’ve either had the site go down because of traffic, or where the site was not completely functional — barring a couple of times where the problem was me, rather than any other issue. That’s a pretty remarkable streak, especially considering this year, when I’ve had several of the busiest days in the site’s history.

Every year around this time I do a completely unsolicited plug for WordPress and its VIP service, because I am a happy customer and I believe that when people give you good service, you should acknowledge it and recommend it. So once again, this is me doing both. If you’re in the market for pretty serious backend service and and an ironclad ability to handle traffic to your site, you should have WordPress VIP on your list. It’s been four years and they haven’t let me down. That’s a pretty enviable record.