Typefaces are an incredibly labor-intensive product to produce. The exact same can be said about programming, often multiplied tenfold by the number of enginee

Typefaces are an incredibly labor-intensive product to produce. The exact same can be said about programming, often multiplied tenfold by the number of engineers. But the software industry has long understood the zero-cost of duplication, and counting on scale to build up massive revenue. Writing a good mobile game is heavily labor-intensive but you can sell it only for $4.99 if you do it a million times. More specialised software costs more not necessarily because it's somehow more expensive to make but because the experts are willing to pay more because they receive more value out of the expert software. And usually there are cheaper options for small players who only need parts of the functionality. So the sellers understand that ideally you would only charge each customer as much as they're willing and able to spend because each time you would still charge something instead of being left without revenue at all. There's revenue in market segments. A marketing studio can afford to pay $10k for a font for a $500k advertisement campaign. An application developer or a personal website owner could pay a onetime $20 for a specific font if he's a design enthusiast but wouldn't pay $100 and rather go with some open, free font. If font licenses cost too much they are not even on the radar for spending except in the high-end cases only. I've never considered buying a font myself but it might become an option with sufficient selection of fonts at a reasonable price.