Humble Brainiac Bundle Features E-Books for Curious Kids

Humble Bundle, the digital games and e-books site, has been getting a lot of traction for its comics bundles lately, including the just-concluded Archie Humble Bundle. Their newest bundle, which launches today, is the Humble Braniac Bundle, a selection of all-ages e-books from No Starch Press on programming, Lego construction, and science, including The Manga Guide to Electricity. You can get the lowest-level bundle for as little as a penny—but as with all things in life, if you pay more, you get more. The selection is pretty amazing, including hands-on books like Steampunk LEGO and Build Your Own Website as well as books on more abstract topics. The bundle will be offered for two weeks, and more books will be added next week. Here’s the starting lineup:

Customers can pay any amount of money and will receive:

• Ruby Wizardry: An Introduction to Programming for Kids
• Lauren Ipsum: A Story About Computer Science and Other Improbable Things
• The Manga Guide to Electricity
• Snip, Burn, Solder, Shred: Seriously Geeky Stuff to Make with Your Kids
• The LEGO Adventure Book: Cars, Castles, Dinosaurs & More!

Customers who pay more than the average user will also receive:

• LEGO Space: Building the Future
• The Manga Guide to Physics
• Python for Kids
• Incredible LEGO Technic
• Build Your Own Website: A Comic Guide to HTML, CSS, and WordPress

And customers who pay $15 or more will receive all of the above, plus:

• Steampunk LEGO
• JavaScript for Kids

“This bundle showcases some of the wonderful books from our neighbor, the San Francisco indie publisher, No Starch Press,” said Kelley Allen, Humble Bundle’s director of e-books. “As a publisher of smart geeky books for smart geeky people, we found their books to be intelligent, quirky, informative and downright charming. It is our hope that our growing book audience here at Humble Bundle will be just as delighted with No Starch Press as we are.”

“We’re committed to helping change the world by making science and technology fun for people of all ages,” said No Starch Press founder Bill Pollock. “With this promotion, No Starch Press is showcasing our unique resources for kids in the hope that we’ll inspire a future generation of programmers, engineers, and all-around geeks. Comics have enormous potential as an educational medium, because their visual format is accessible and makes hard topics engaging. I recall a conversation at the Frankfurt Bookfair last year with a mother who told me that her dyslexic daughter had improved her Physics grade from a C to an A, all due to our Manga Guide to Physics. (I actually didn’t believe her but she told me in no uncertain terms that this book made all the difference.) For that matter, I’ve seen twelve-year-old kids devour our Python for Kids book and 10-year-old girls read page after page in the Manga Guide to Electricity while standing at our table at LEGO shows. It’s gratifying to give kids that leg up—there’s no reason learning should be a drag—so we’re pleased to offer so many of our STEM comics in this one promotion.”

If you’re new to Humble Bundle, here’s how it works: The books are all digital downloads, which you can get in a variety of different formats: PDF, Kindle, etc. The first set of books in the bundle is sold on a pay-what-you-want basis; you can pay as little as a penny and get all of them. As people buy the bundles, the average price is tracked on the website. Pay more than that and you get an additional set of books. For a flat $15, you get the first two bundles plus a couple more books. And halfway through the sale (which lasts two weeks), another set of books is announced for anyone who pays more than the average. The full bundle is worth over $250, so it’s a pretty good deal.

Humble Bundle allows the purchaser to donate part of the price to charity, in this case the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Freedom of the Press Foundation, as well as to designate what percentage goes to the publisher and what percentage to Humble Bundle itself. If you want to know more, check out my interview with Allen.

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