Quote:
Originally Posted by stonetools
With all due respect, a fan who isn't willing to buy an author's book isn't really a fan, IMO. ... No business sets new product prices based on used product prices. I can get a used car for the fraction of what a new car costs, but if I walked into a new car lot and demanded that they sell me a new car at the used car price, I'd be laughed off the lot.
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True, but it misses a few details.
- I can be a fan of Porsches without ever buying one.
- And I can be a fan of Porsches while owning a more expensive and generally higher-performing car (which I am)
- I can buy a Porsche (or other car), use it for a while, and resell it, reducing my cost-of-ownership to a depreciation value much lower than the initial cost.
I may be a fan of an author but unwilling to pay, e.g, $30 for that author's newest tome. I might be willing to pay $12 for it in paper, but unwilling to pay $8 for it in ebook form, because...
- Paper is still a bit more magical, and certainly more tangible, than an ebook.
- I can more easily lend out the paper.
- And I can, if desired, resell it. (Typically at a 75% depreciation, but none-the-less, even then it becomes less expensive than the single-user ebook.)
But the reality is actually a bit different. I consider roughly $2 for an Android app and $3 for an ebook the impulse level, doesn't require any consideration. Then there's the slight-consideration range, sliding up to around $8, beyond which there are too many options for the ebook to meet my personal sense of fair value, mostly because at that point it's usually more expensive than the paper.