[FM Discuss] berlin pricing

[Douglas Bagnall]

Adam wrote:

> It occurs to me that a much stronger model might be to sell all our
> books strictly at cost price (ie. at the same price lulu charges to
> make them) and offer a model like these Berlin bars. Lulu.com offers
> the possibility of uploading and selling PDF. So we could, for example,
> offer pdf certificates through lulu.com for the price of 1, 10 and 100
> euro.


A variation on this would be to build the certificate into the book, so
people can buy the standard edition, or the gold edition, or the
platinum hardback edition or the personalised
flossmanuals-certifies-that-I-am-cool edition.  It is a familiar model,
which is good in that people will understand what they are dealing with,
and perhaps bad in that it may not seem so special.  And it kind of
leads to upselling ("for just ten more euros you could have the gold
supporters edition with 110gsm paper!") and related marketing tricks.

Selling separate certificates reminds me of the medieval practice of
selling indulgences where the church would sell you an easier passage
through the afterlife, and it makes me wonder whether the certificates
should be sold as offsetting particular sins.  Floss Manuals could, for
example, indemnify people against karma incurred through the use of the
flash plugin, or a lingering preference for Word over OpenOffice.

One more thing: the idea of selling personalised editions is not very
far away from offering a remix service.  How much would people pay for
FM to compile a manual that tells them exactly the things they need to
know their workflow?  This service would be carried out by FM writers,
who would need to decide how the money splits.  It might help shift the
situation of free software documenters towards that of free software
authors, whose expertise is a valued commodity in itself, beyond any
particular software they've produced.


Douglas