Old Man’s War Part of the Humble eBook Bundle
Posted on October 9, 2012 Posted by John Scalzi 35 Comments
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.
Ordered! And soon to be read on the Samsung tablet I picked up shortly after you recommended it (it’s been excellent; that’s how I did all my Hugo reading and mostly how I make Skype and Gmail video calls when I travel)
Just ordered it, even though I already have “Old Man’s War.” Great idea and great charities.
Any idea how long this Humble Bundle will last, John? (Not that you’ll reply right away, nor do I expect you to, because you’re busy with a deadline. But I thought I would ask.)
Can I do this from the UK?
Doh! There’s a countdown timer right on the Humble Bundle page, and it currently shows about two weeks left on the bundle.
I looked there before posting the question, honest! I just didn’t see it the first time. :-)
The provided link says how much more time you have (just over two weeks). I don’t specifically see that there are any restrictions on location (it does say “download the books from your purchase from anywhere”, so I guess you’d be good).
Just bought it right away without second thought. The HumbleBundle always means quality, and if anything’s as good as Old Men’s War, it’s really a bargain.
@ Helen: you should be able to buy from everywhere in the world (at least it worked in Germany ;-) )
I can’t read digitally, but I have told everyone I know about this. It’s an awesome idea!
Thanks, guys, safely purchased!
Yes! I’m doing a happy dance. It’s really rather unsightly.
Ordered. And the only reasons I’m not kissing you, John, are that I’m male, straight, socially inhibited, on the other side of the Atlantic and slightly afeard of Krissy.
Man, the coolest authors getting together with the people that gave us the HIB. This is awesome.
Done. Got Old Man’s War for the third time I think. Either way, cool. I dig EFF.
Done. Most of the money to EFF.
Excellent! Grabbed a set for myself and if one or two of my favorite readers don’t get a bundle for themselves I’ll have to do some early holiday shopping.
Man, this blog is awesome. Next thing you know, there’ll be a recipe for Boston cream pie.
And at the moment, the top contributor is Wil Wheaton’s clown sweater. Which apparently has a fractionally larger budget than Wil himself at #2.
I’ll have to get this, probably splitting it something like 30-30-30-10, 30% each to the three charities and a token amount to the Humble people for running this thing. Average Windows purchase is only $10.13, so I’ll have to pull that up a tiny bit.
Purchased. The Humble Bundles are always unparalleled good values that directly benefit creators. This makes me doubly-happy. The recent move into music and now ebooks? Fantastic.
As with other bundles, I have some of the contents already, but SO WHAT. Now I have a DRM free e-book version of OMW to match my dead tree copy and a bunch of great books besides that I didn’t know about or hadn’t gotten, yet. It’s a win-win-win.
I owned about half of the books in physical form, but now I have all of them as electrons. :D Fantastic deal!
It is a neat idea. I hope it does well.
Are all of these titles not currently under contract for eBooks with other publishers? I’d have thought that Old Man’s War eBooks were sold by Tor. The covers on Amazon and B&N are the same covers as on my paperback. Did Tor have to license that particular title?
I already own OMW, but lots of other good stuff there I don’t. Done and done.
Great deal. I own most of this stuff, but not all of it, and will be having my friends pick this up. For those who haven’t read her, Kelly Link’s short stories are amazing.
I have almost zero knowledge of modern science fiction literature, but this bundle seems quite interesting and I’m looking into the individual books if they might interest me. So, as some of you here already own some of the books, can you give a recommendation of what you consider an absolute must read and what might be more of an outsider?
Got mine
BubuIIC, aside from OMW, which is awesome, I strongly recommend all of Paolo Bacigalupi’s stuff. His Windup Girl was named one of the top ten best books (not just science fiction books) of 2009 by Time Magazine, with good reason. Gripping stuff.
BubiIIC, I can also strongly recommend Zoo City.
Ok, eight more books added to the pile of unread ebooks in my iPad. I guess that’s better having them piling up by my bed… :-)
@BubuIIC: +1 to ZOO CITY, and STRANGER THINGS HAPPEN is amazing. I haven’t read MAGIC FOR BEGINNERS yet, but if it’s half as good, it’ll be twice as good as any other feminist magic-realist horror you read this year.
Never heard of Humble Bundle before; obviously my loss. I got the bundle and passed the link on to friends. Thanks!
Purchased pretty much the minute after I saw Scalzi’s tweet, as I was reading one of Doctorow’s other novels (For The Win). I already have OMW in trade paper, but $10 for eight books, when a single newly-published ebook can run that much AND the proceeds are mostly going to three important charities? I’ll eat ramen for another week.
This makes me happy about buying ebooks again!
I already have OMW in paperback but since 25 of these “dollar” things are only 15 pounds, I thought why not get it to read on my tablet too?
Speaking of which, can anyone recommend a good place to buy Redshirts in a format I can read on my android tablet?
@steve, from the internet: it’s a Tor book, so I imagine it’ll be available through their upcoming DRM-free store, which AFAIK is still scheduled to launch before the end of the year.
I’m about 3/4 of the way through “Old Man’s War”. I bought it as part of this collection because of Neil Gaiman, who is my favorite author, but this is by far my favorite book in the bunch. John, you just gained a new fan. I can’t wait to read the rest of your work.
Thanks for putting OMW up there.
I’d never heard of you before, but I buy every Humble Bundle that comes out, and I’m a big e-book reader. OMW was the first thing I read out of the lot, and I enjoyed it a lot. My only gripe is that this series is published by TOR and not Baen, because that makes it difficult to buy the rest of your books through Webscriptions. :)
My mother picked up the HumbleBundle for me as a surprise. I just finished Old Man’s War, it’s been a long time since I was that caught up with a character. I’ll be picking up the rest of the series as fast as I can, and following your future releases.
Thanks for a delightful evening.