3 ms·
I didn't set the price, but I will note that tech books typically only sell small numbers, regardless of price. It's a small target market.
by LukasMathis 15y ago
I didn't set the price, but I will note that tech books typically only sell small numbers, regardless of price. It's a small target market.
- bugsy 15y agoIt's only a small market if your publisher keeps telling himself that. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Sure there are tech books on antenna design for satellites that don't sell many copies. But there are other topics that are of far more board interest. Usability is one of them. As of May, 2002, the U.S. Department of Labor - Bureau of Labor Statistics says there are approximately 562,700 computer programmers in the U.S. That's just one job title and the field has grown since then. There's also software engineers, web designers, programmer-analysts, etc. Easily a couple million jobs. Paperback like you have there costs $2.87 to print in quantity 3000 in Singapore. There's a lot of flexibility in working with the price. I would experiment with it but that's just me. Presumably your publisher has experimented. But maybe he hasn't. Perhaps he assumes that the potential number of people interested is less than 2 million. Perhaps he thinks it is 100 or 200. I bet it's more than that though.
- LukasMathis 15y agoFair enough. You make a good argument. Maybe lowering the price would increase revenue; I don't know.