Pay-what-you-want ebooks 'bundle' makes $1.1 m in two weeks

An experiment from major authors including Neil Gaiman and Cory Doctorow, which allows readers to pay the price of their choice for a collection of ebooks, has shattered all expectations, racking up sales of more than $1.1m (£700,000) in under two weeks.

The Humble ebook Bundle – an extension to ebooks of an experiment in pricing from Humble Bundle which has already been applied to music and games – went live on 9 October – offering customers a selection of novels and comics by award-winning science fiction and fantasy writers including Gaiman, Doctorow, Lauren Beukes, Paolo Bacigalupi, John Scalzi and Kelly Link. The packages is “DRM-free”, which means readers are not restricted in how many times they download or copy the ebooks.

Although, if sold separately, the collection of books would cost $157, readers are allowed to choose the price they want to pay for the bundle. They can also choose how they want to split their payment: between the authors, a selection of charities, and organiser Humble Bundle itself.

So far, 80,625 bundles of books have been sold, for an average price of $14.18 (if readers pay more than the average, extra content is unlocked). The promotion closes later today, and as of this morning had pulled in $1,143,151.85, with one user paying a whopping $1,238 for the 13 books.

» via The Guardian

Notes

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    SO fucking awesome to see this was so successful. I think the eBook bundle brought in more than a lot of the ones for...
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