3 ms·
"What’s most interesting to me, however, is that so many more readers were willing to buy a font license (at $59–299) than to make a donation (at $5–10
by ef4 12y ago
"What’s most interesting to me, however, is that so many more readers were willing to buy a font license (at $59–299) than to make a donation (at $5–10). Don’t get me wrong—I’m utterly grateful. But it’s counterintuitive: I never expected that the cheaper option would be so much less popular. Economists, I invite your explanations."
This is not surprising to me at all. There are multiple reasons why the font sale is easier to make.
The whole book is an excellent sales pitch for the fonts. It's hard to believe you didn't design it that way, because you did everything right. You establish credibility as an expert. You give the reader a gift of useful information. You explain at length the value of the product. You even help the reader see herself as someone who's savvy enough to buy the product (copy like: "You are not apathetic" in the Times New Roman page.)
So you have a great sales pitch for the fonts. Whereas the donation suffers in comparison. There's no quid pro quo -- I understand you see the book itself as the value they'd be paying for, but that value is already in the past by the time they're deciding to donate. It changes the psychology.
Also, plenty of people can plunk down a company card to buy a font (or a book). It's a legitimate business expense that's easy to justify. It can be much harder to justify a "donation" to a random author on the internet. For this reason alone, you'd be better off changing "donation" to an e-book sale, even if the e-book is just the same content as the website.
- Kronopath 12y agoI've recommended this book to many many people in the past, but still haven't gotten around to paying anything for it, largely for the reasons you mention. I looked at his options for payment, and they ranged from "buy one of my fonts", which was tempting but expensive, to "buy Typography for Lawyers", which I wasn't interested in because I'm not a lawyer, to "donate to me", which felt like I was getting nothing in return. I'd gladly pay $10-15 for a DRM-free ebook version of this book, even if it's the exact same content as the one online, since I can keep it with me on my mobile devices and be sure that even if the site one day goes down I still own and can read the book. Or hell, since the author apparently has objections to e-book file formats and closed platforms[0], then give me a clean downloadable desktop version of the website as static HTML or something. Or an app version of the book which is just static HTML wrapped in a web view. Anything along those lines would be fine, as long as I can view it offline and keep it past the point when the author stops paying for his server. [0] http://practicaltypography.com/why-there's-no-e-book-or-pdf.html http://practicaltypography.com/why-there's-no-e-book-or-pdf....
- vram22 12y agoGreat points, worth keeping in mind by wannabe authors.
- corysama 12y agoEverything ef4 said plus: Paying to get something is a lot more motivating than paying for something you already have and are under no risk of losing. The idea of people paying you out of pure gratitude is probably the most attractive, guilt-free, inarguably nice method around for getting paid. Unfortunately, I've never seen it work not-terribly. Even just putting the book behind a pay-what-you-want wall that allows $0 but defaults to $5 would probably significantly increase the number of payers. It's not even about people's greed or ability/desire to pay. It's about their laziness. Can you imagine how terribly the Humble Bundle would perform if they had you download all of the games immediately for free then asked you to remember to come back and pay for them later? The entire revenue plan for the Bundle organizers themselves rests on including themselves in the revenue split by default knowing that most people will be too lazy to even spend brain cycles thinking about what they personally think should be the proper split. The customers just look at the fairly reasonable default and go "Um, sure. Whatever. Here's my money. Can I get the stuff now?"
- mcguire 12y ago"The whole book is an excellent sales pitch for the fonts. It's hard to believe you didn't design it that way, because you did everything right. You establish credibility as an expert. You give the reader a gift of useful information. You explain at length the value of the product. You even help the reader see herself as someone who's savvy enough to buy the product (copy like: "You are not apathetic" in the Times New Roman page.)" ...you flog the fonts at every opportunity... Really, reading the book, the "...or you could buy my fonts" and the "because you're not apathetic" comments being repeated at every opportunity was my biggest complaint.