5 ms·

I think if you were to release a new book, you should target it at $7-$12, rather than $1. The hurdle of paying anything at all, is likely to stop many from go

I think if you were to release a new book, you should target it at $7-$12, rather than $1. The hurdle of paying anything at all, is likely to stop many from going any further and on the opposite side, the people who are probably likely to still pay (they read your free book / know your rep) - are probably quite happy to pay a higher price than $1. Therefore limiting your price to $1 would lose you money. e.g. Free price - 335,000 downloads - $0 sales. $1 price - 26,000 downloads - $26,000 sales $7 price - 13,000 downloads - $91,000 sales - This is ultimately why you would have to experiment with pricing and see the effect on your sales cycle. Often a higher price yields a greater profit, as the number of sales doesn't drop as much as expected.

slee029 16y ago
I agree that you should play around with price, but I also believe Zed could be leveraging his free tutorial to market another service later on. For example, while this isn't an intro to python book, Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails Tutorial I think provides an excellent revenue model for authors. Basically he provides a free online tutorial that he cross-subsidizes with charging on the premium screencasts and pdf/hardbook editions. I read the tutorial myself in a few days as a beginner and eventually was convinced to buy the screencasts to get a better visual understanding. If it wasn't for the free text I would never have known about Michael's skills and would definitely not have paid for it. You also have extremely experienced industry leaders providing free screencasts and podcasts educating others for free but in turn increasing their own exposure and overall deal-flow. In the case of coders, you could expect guys like Ryan Bates and Charles Wood to increase their consulting/speaking engagements, where in the case of vc's and angels like Mark Suster and Jason Calacanis I would expect better deal-flow of up and coming startups. As such, before resorting to price elasticity, I like the general idea of working through cross-subsidization to figure out alternative revenue streams.

slee029 16y ago

I agree that you should play around with price, but I also believe Zed could be leveraging his free tutorial to market another service later on. For example, while this isn't an intro to python book, Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails Tutorial I think provides an excellent revenue model for authors. Basically he provides a free online tutorial that he cross-subsidizes with charging on the premium screencasts and pdf/hardbook editions. I read the tutorial myself in a few days as a beginner and eventually was convinced to buy the screencasts to get a better visual understanding. If it wasn't for the free text I would never have known about Michael's skills and would definitely not have paid for it. You also have extremely experienced industry leaders providing free screencasts and podcasts educating others for free but in turn increasing their own exposure and overall deal-flow. In the case of coders, you could expect guys like Ryan Bates and Charles Wood to increase their consulting/speaking engagements, where in the case of vc's and angels like Mark Suster and Jason Calacanis I would expect better deal-flow of up and coming startups. As such, before resorting to price elasticity, I like the general idea of working through cross-subsidization to figure out alternative revenue streams.