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StoryBundle Launches Their First Pay-What-You-Want eBook Bundle

The ebook deal site we’ve all been waiting for has finally launched. StoryBundle went live today with their first deal.

It’s called the Big Bang bundle, and it includes 5 ebooks (4 SF, 1 fantasy) from 5 authors. Three look to be true indies, while a couple of the titles appear to be from the author’s backlist, including at least one which was published by Pocket Books (and apparently might have still has the rights to the paperback).

Update: I was contacted by the author. That Amazon page is in error; he has all the rights back from Pocket.

I recall that Story Bundle made a big deal about working with indie authors, so it’s something of a surprise to see them break with the plan this early. Here’s what StoryBundle founder Jason Chen wrote in the announcement today:

"My dream is two-fold," said Jason Chen, formerly of Gizmodo. "As an avid reader, I wanted to make a place where independent authors can get exposure and readers can get quality ebooks without having to sift through list after list of titles. With StoryBundle, voracious readers will always have great reads easily within their reach."

Yeah, that’s not true. Nitpicking aside, that title is bound to be at least a passable work. Otherwise it probably wouldn’t still be in print.

You can pay what you want for this bundle, but if you pay more than $7 you’ll also get a couple bonus ebooks. You can download them in either Epub or Kindle, and since there’s no DRM you can convert the ebooks to whichever format you like.

Last week I covered Snug Nugget, a site which offers a similar pay what you want bundle. I have to say that StoryBundle looks to have a much more polished site.  They offer more payment options and StoryBundle  even follows through on the original Hunble Bundle idea of letting you pick the split between the authors and the service as well a which charity that you’d like to donate to. And frankly, Story Bundle  has nicer looking ebooks.

From what I can tell, I’m not the only one who is unimpressed with Snug Nugget. This site has been up for a week, and they’ve only sold 81 bundles. What’s more, the average payment is currently only $5.13.  Part of the reason why it is so low is that only 9 people out of the 81 buyers paid more than a penny.

Yes, 72 people valued the Snug Nugget bundle at only a penny. That’s a terrible ratio, and unless that changes Snug Nugget won’t last long.

StoryBundle

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Comments


K August 9, 2012 um 2:04 am

Is it me or you didn’t post links to any of them?


Yaron August 9, 2012 um 12:27 pm

K, he put the link to StoryBundle right at the bottom of the article.

And in the "You may also like" section, just further down, there’s a link to the previous article talking about Snug Nugget, which in turn has the link to their site at the bottom of that article.

And both are also of the basic www.NAME.com format. Or, well, since we’re over the internet and all, maybe I can help by pointing you to http://lmgtfy.com/?q=StoryBundle


Ereader NL Lezer bepaalt prijs en marge bij StoryBundle » Ereader NL August 9, 2012 um 6:07 pm

[…] (Via: TDR) […]


Fiction Bundle Offers a 6-eBook Sci-Fi Bundle for $6 – The Digital Reader December 12, 2013 um 8:50 pm

[…] you have any funds left after buying an ebook bundle from StoryBundle, BookBale, Baen Books, Humble Bundle, and not to mention the occasional bundle from the Kindle […]


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