Quote:
Originally Posted by Tectonic
One way or another they'll get their $50/month from you but given a choice, they would much rather maximize profits on that $50. Even with low costs, it's more profitable to sell 5 books for $50 than it is to sell 10 for the same price.
Now the question: what would be a good reason for them to lower their prices?
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1) Customer goodwill is worth something. Customers happy with what they're paying continue to do so; customers who think they're being overcharged will put that product on the top of the list to stop paying when they hit financial difficulties.
2) Recommendations: customers who feel they are paying "too much" may continue to buy, but not bother recommending the product to people who aren't already interested. Why turn your friends on to an expensive, annoying, technologically-complex hobby if they're not already involved? It's a lot easier to convince friends to "try ebooks" if they have an incentive--like, it costs less than paper.
3) Customers who feel they're being
cheated*, not just "charged more than it's worth," are more likely to turn to "cheating" alternatives, like darknet downloads. More ethical customers just switch to cheaper alternatives--public domain, creative commons, and promo giveaways.
(Cheated: Bought a book that won't download, or won't transfer to new reading device.
Spent $150 in time on $9 book. Book is riddled with OCR errors. Website error downloads wrong book. Being called "frauds" for using features available on the site. And so on. Customers are more likely to forgive errors if they didn't feel they were being charged a premium price; they assume that comes with good product & premium service.)
4) Competition. Right now, the number of large ebook publishers is small... but the number of small publishers, including non-DRM publishers, is growing, especially for various types of genre fiction. While textbook buyers may be a captive audience, sci-fi fans and romance fans are not, and there's no shortage of cheap, good fiction that isn't sold through BoB or Diesel.
5) First-time buyer purchases. People are more willing to take a chance on something new if they think the price is good.
6) One-time purchases. Not the the perfect desired customer of any business, but impulse, one-time buyers can be a substantial part of the sales demographic--and there'll be more of them if prices are low.