[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: Nibbles Magazines ISO
Sir Fart A Lot wrote:
I agree with everything your saying, its a real art though to find that
sort of golden price point where the most profit can be made with the
lowest price (its hard to raise prices). But making any sort of product
for Apple 2 users and enthusiats is not exactly trying to making
millions and odds are you may lose money. I have to feel that expecting
really low prices is sort of delusional unless the guy just gives up and
decides to cut his losses and run which is not good for the community.
If everyone in America suddenly got into buying telescopes (my other
obsession) I would expect the high prices of my other hobby to come
down, but I am not holding my breath on that one either (science is sort
of look at scornfully these days in America) and I just pay the high
number knowing that there just arent that many amateur astronomers I am
just glad that people even consider tiny markets like the Apple ][ to
make product as most of these guys are enthusiats who deserve to
certainly not have to lose money, I cant really expect them to be
dumping stuff for a market that may only be a few hundred people in
total if EVERYONE purchased.
I certainly agree that today's "Apple II market" is very small, and
even that small figure includes many "collectors" who would not find
a DVD of scans of an old magazine nearly as interesting as a box of
*actual* old magazines (and old Nibble magazines are actually not
rare, yet).
The non-collector Apple II market is accustomed to "garage sale"
pricing on most of what they buy, with a few exceptions. They are
probably willing to pay a bit for convenience, but not much.
Virtually all of the few current vendors to the Apple II market
have priced their goods to simply recover costs, realizing that
their efforts were a labor of love, and personal awareness that
they have done something fun and/or useful (plus some public
acknowledgement) is their main reward. Anyone looking to the
Apple II market as a money-making opportunity is out of touch
with reality.
The publisher of the Nibble DVD is the original publisher of the
magazine, and he has priced it as he might a collection of all
the backissues of a current archival magazine (like National
Geographic). In today's Apple II market, this is a considerable
overestimate of their marginal utility to most enthusiasts, who
either already have boxes of Nibble in their garage or can live
without them.
I agree that it is unlikely that he will reduce the price to
a point where it could be considered a "no brainer" to buy it--
that's the way emotions are. But he would certainly make more
money--and more importantly, get his "baby" into the hands of
more people--by doing so. The only "risk" is ticking off the
people who paid full price earlier (kind of like Steve Jobs with
the iPhone ;-), but I expect Mike would be forgiven. ;-)
What would *really* make the utility of the DVD greater would
be the inclusion of all the Nibble and Micro-Sparc software,
all of which is thoroughly obsolete, but some still of interest
to enthusiasts. Since the publisher's archives were lost, this
would essentially be a labor of love for the community to find
and assemble this software--for which charging additional
money would be somewhat incongruous.
At some point, copyright holders must judge that they have
received fair compensation for their product and allow the
works to circulate freely. This is not currently well-supported
by law, but is, I think, the reasonable position--particularly
for works with an obvious "shelf life" like old computer stuff.
I have noted before that the term of copyright in the US will
always obey the rule that "Mickey Mouse is not in the public
domain". There's a lot of money lobbying to make that so.
Special interests pretty much ensure that copyright will not
fulfill the role intended by its creators, to stimulate the
creation of new works while permitting fair use and enriching
the public domain.
And as the price comes down, the number of sales goes up.
Pricing theory is about finding the price which will, as a
result of this "elasticity" of the market, maximize total
profit.
Since all the effort required to make all the copies (except
plopping a $0.20 DVD in a burner) is already spent, the question
isn't how much trouble it was to create it, but how much it's
worth to the largest number of potential buyers.
Put another way, "sunk cost" is irrelevant.
A well-worn rule of thumb is that the price that marks the
start of the "impulse buy" range is the price of a pizza. ;-)
So I'm guessing that if the price dropped to $24.95, he'd
sell over a hundred of them--all but $1 + $1 postage would
be *pure profit*!
(BTW, I already bought mine. ;-)
-michael
NadaPong: Network game demo for Apple II computers!
Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/
"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it's seriously underused."