As of this writing, the Humble eBook Bundle has sold 77,909 of the digital book package, raising $1,096,100. The average buyer paid $14.07 for the collection and only one day remains to buy the special offer.

The Humble Bundle team has offered a collection of digital books from writers like Cory Doctorow, Paolo Bacigalupi, Lauren Beukes, Kelly Linkand more, letting readers pay as much or as little as they want. As the project exploded in popularity, they added a series of comic book bonuses to the bundle, including  xkcd: volume 0 by Randall Munroe Penny Arcade Volume 1 & 2 by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, and two Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal Collections by Zach Weiner.

Here’s more from the site: “Separately, this collection of fantastic novels and comics would cost around $157. But we’re letting you set the price! These eBooks are available in multiple formats including PDF, MOBI, and ePub so they work great on your computer, eBook readers, and a wide array of mobile devices … Choose how your purchase is divided: to the authors, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Child’s Play Charity, and/or the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.”

Can the pay-what-you-want model work for the publishing industry? UPDATE: With five days left to purchase, the Humble eBook Bundle has already raised more than $938,100.

The Humble Bundle team has offered a collection of digital books from writers like Cory Doctorow, Paolo Bacigalupi, Lauren Beukes, Kelly Link and more, letting readers pay as much or as little as they want. They have already sold more than 68,450 copies of the bundle, with the average buyer paying $13.71 for the bundle. We discussed the bundle on the Morning Media Menu today, press play below to listen.

Here’s more from the site: “Separately, this collection of fantastic novels and comics would cost around $157. But we’re letting you set the price! These eBooks are available in multiple formats including PDF, MOBI, and ePub so they work great on your computer, eBook readers, and a wide array of mobile devices … Choose how your purchase is divided: to the authors, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Child’s Play Charity, and/or the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.”

Editor’s Note: This post was updated as the story evolved.

For anybody debating about enrolling in graduate school, New York University professor Kio Stark has a Kickstarter project for you; she is raising money for a nonfiction book called Don’t Go Back to School. Above, we’ve embedded a video about the project.

The funds will allow Stark the time she needs to continue interviewing subjects, research, writing, creating the book and printing (and signing) copies to reward backers. Stark estimates that the research and writing will require three more months to complete.

Here’s more about the project: “In Don’t Go Back to School, I’ll deconstruct the basic infrastructure that school provides—things like resources, expertise, evaluation, and a learning community. And I’ll profile fascinating, self-taught people, showcasing the practical ways they meet those needs. I’ve already talked to people like Cory Doctorow about learning to be a working writer, Dan Sinker about learning to code, Quinn Norton about learning neurology and psychology as a science writer, and a dozen others so far, with many more interviews planned.”

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More than 25 years ago, children’s author Chris Van Allsburg published The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, a collection of 14 mysterious illustrations.

For The Chronicles of Harris Burdick, Van Allsburg teamed up with thirteen fellow writers to create short stories inspired by these drawings. The group of authors include Sherman Alexie, M.T. Anderson, Kate DiCamillo, Cory Doctorow, Jules Feiffer, Stephen King, Tabitha King, Lois Lowry, Gregory Maguire, Walter Dean Myers, Linda Sue Park, Louis Sachar, Jon Scieszka and an introduction by Lemony Snicket.

This powerhouse group of writers has collectively won one Pulitzer Prize, three National Book Awards, five Newbery Medals and several Caldecotts.

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The next time somebody asks you “What is steampunk?” just show them the trailer for the upcoming documentary, Vintage Tomorrows. (embedded above).

The documentary already includes authors Cherie Priest and Cory Doctorow, so we look forward to the parts about steampunk books. This GalleyCat editor has found himself stumbling to explain the word “steampunk” in the past, a unique blend of science fiction, historical fiction and crazy creativity.

Here’s more about the movie: “Trailer for the coming future casting documentary ‘Vintage Tomorrows’ about what Steampunk can teach us about the future.”

Several authors, including some currently signed with HarperCollins, have joined a petition launched by librarian Andy Woodruff protesting the publisher’s decision to limit library eBooks to 26 check-outs.

Change.org reports that HarperCollins author Marilyn Johnson wrote about her disdain in a blog post: “HarperCollins says it is working to protect its authors, but I wasn’t consulted and I had to read about this on Library Journal and on the blogs and tweets of my librarian sources. This isn’t what I want, e-books with evaporating powers! Are you kidding? No author wants to write a book with the power to disappear.”

According to the article, Cory Doctorow, Judith McQuown, and Orel Protopopescu have signed the petition. So far, Woodruff’s petition has drawn more than 65,700 signatures.

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On March 28, The New York Times will roll out a metered paywall plan, charging avid readers $15 a month to read the paper online and with a mobile app. The iPad subscription will cost $20 and an all access plan will cost $35.

The plan includes a big loophole: “The Times will allow access to people who arrive at its Web site through search engines like Google and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. There will, however, be a five-article limit a day for people who visit the site from Google.” Author Cory Doctorow wonders if hackers will create a “browser redirection service” to dodge the paywall.

The plan launched in Canada today. If it works, the newspaper could pave the way for more paid content on the web, from newspapers to magazines to online journals. Will you pay $15 to read the paper every month? Will this plan change the way we read online?

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When working on your National Novel Writing Month manuscript, don’t let unknown facts slow down your writing. Instead of inventing facts or plagiarizing somebody work, just type TK and keep writing.

Novelist Cory Doctorow shared the simple and practical tip at Lifehacker: “[D]o what journalists do: type ‘TK’ where your fact should go, as in ‘The Brooklyn bridge, all TK feet of it, sailed into the air like a kite.’ ‘TK’ appears in very few English words (the one I get tripped up on is “Atkins”) so a quick search through your document for ‘TK’ will tell you whether you have any fact-checking to do afterwards. And your editor and copyeditor will recognize it if you miss it and bring it to your attention.”

This is our fourteenth NaNoWriMo Tip of the Day. As writers around the country join the writing marathon this month, we will share one piece of advice or writing tool to help you cope with this daunting project. For more writing advice, read our interview with Doctorow.

Reviewed by Maryan Pelland
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Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) used to be a teen niche of Internet gaming. MMORPG have become, in Cory Doctorow‘s new novel, a sub-culture as powerful as real world economies, leaking riches from make-believe to reality. For the Win, Doctorow’s latest, takes place in the real world thoroughly interlaced with cyber-culture. It is the 1984 of 2010, and it’s scary.

For the Win is a YA novel, and experienced young readers who embraced Harry Potter’s complicated universe should find this one satisfying. It also fits the adult fiction audience like a glove.

What happens when real world money-manipulators and power mongers discover real profit in virtual economies of MMORPGs? The moniker massively multiplayer is no exaggeration — millions of players interact with each other in real time on huge warring worlds. Players get sucked into cyber-cultures and these worlds become as real and competitive as everyday life. Relationships form, rivalries boil, and acquisition of virtual money, property, possessions, and power is very serious.

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Between Amazon’s soon-to-be-divided Kindle “bestseller” list to debates about literary freemiums, the free eBook has been a controversial topic around the publishing Internets.

Today’s guest on the Morning Media Menu was novelist and blogger Cory Doctorow, author of the new book For the Win–talking about online currency, book promotion, and if worker unions are feasible in digital culture. Doctorow (pictured via Joi Ito) discussed his controversial strategy of releasing a free eBook edition of his book alongside the print book.

Press play below to listen. Here’s an excerpt: “I make the books available as free downloads under a Creative Commons license that encourages my readers to share them and remix them, provided they are doing so non-commercially. That means one reader who loves the book who knows another reader who would love the book can put the book in that reader’s hands … Tim O’Reilly says: ‘The problem with writers isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity.’ It may be hard to monetize fame, but it is impossible to monetize obscurity.”

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