Group-purchasing to set prices, has it been attempted for new books?

[sbroome]

The idea is this, at certain threshholds of pre-ordering, the actual price drops for everyone. This would be similar to the way comic book shops sometimes will give a discount if you set aside a title every month because they don't have to speculate on a sale. So what if, for example, a new book costs $4.99 on your website, but if 500 people purchase, the cost drops to $4.49, and so on, until some floor is reached. It might encourage people to help out with the marketing on your behalf with the idea of saving themselves and others money.

Obviously some sort of funds securing would have to be done by a site like amazon does for kickstarter, just wondering if it's been attempted as a way to increase volume.

[taustin]

There's no reason you couldn't use Kickstarter for exactly that. I've seen similiar things done there, in the form of extras for everybody if certain goals are met.

[sbroome]

Originally Posted by taustin

There's no reason you couldn't use Kickstarter for exactly that. I've seen similiar things done there, in the form of extras for everybody if certain goals are met.

Wouldn't kickstarter's percentages + tax kill the bottom line versus finding a way to do it directly with a micropayment system? This wouldn't be about extras, it'd be about a simple price reduction.