Book People Archive

Re: Trade protectism explain in relation to cartoons.

In a message dated 2/2/2006 1:42:57 PM Mountain Standard Time, hart@[redacted] 
writes:
> Actually, more and more people are learning to do all this on their own,
> through direct power via control of their computers, etc.  I gave the
> example of Robert Rodriguez and his "Troublemaker Studios," earlier.
> Of course, you could simply do it yourself, in any numbers, for even less.


I think that it is true that more people are doing this on their own.  Some 
may actually become quite professional.  When I was in business before my 
accident my use of computers, fax's and the internet made me appear as though
I was a large company. And while it is true you can do it yourself for less 
(burning DVD's).  But you are still spending about 20-35 minuntes per disk
to burn one.  Burning 20 DVD's takes around 10 hours.  Burning 100 DVD's
take 50 hours.
  
You reach a point where just from a time factor it's more economical to stamp 
them out rather than burn them.  Not to mention people think (so I've been 
told a few times) that paper labels don't look as professional as silk screen 
printing.  And although I haven't run across it yet. Burned DVD's/CD's don't 
have as long a lifetime as stamped DVD's/CD's.  Some are saying as short as 2 
years.  Some are claiming that stamped DVD's/CD's unless the blanks are
archival quality (gold leaf) have a life of only 10 years.  There is even
a fungus that eats the aluminum leaf of CD's down in Brazil.

> "Maximizes your profits," there's the rub.
> Whatever happened to just making "a decent profit?"
> "We owe it to our shareholders" to charge as much as we can get!
> "You can't blame me for wanting to bring home more for my children!"
> Sheesh!
 
Actually I think that maximizing your profits is making a decent profit.  You 
have to make a living wage and have enough investment capital to keep going.  
I have never had to face shareholder's ( just partners ) so I wouldn't know.  
Partners are difficult enough which is why I have always insisted on having 
control.  My needs are really very simple as all my income from this is spent 
on buying more books to scan and blanks and computer equipment/scanners to keep
expanding upward.  One of the reasons why I am doing this is because my wife 
objected to my buying more books with the family income.  But as long as I am 
makingn money to buy books not using family income that is ok.

> > Prices set very low imply that the product is not worth very much.
> Only in the perspectives of certain points of view.
> When you are dying of thirst, a gallon of water is priceless.
> Whey you are dying of hunder, a meal of anything is priceless.
> When you have polluted all the air, fresh air is priceless.
> How many of you are aware that there have been "fresh air stations"
> providing a literal "breath of fresh air" in cities of millions for
> over a decade now?

This reminds me of what Mark Twain say "That a man's most precious possession 
is his last breath."  I use to give collections of ebooks to people for 
Christmas gifts and birthday presents.  They never even used them at all.  And 
people didn't start using them until I started selling them.  When I talk to 
people about what I do for a living.  A man is defined by his job you know it 
seems.  People always seem to say public domain books, they aren't worth
anything are they or they wouldn't be public domain."  It's as bad as
explaining what I did before.  I was an Abstractor. 

> The point here is that the price of being "rich enough to do what you want"
> in terms of making CDs, DVDs, etc., has fallen to the point where a billion
> people out there can consider it, and millions actually do it.
> This is a far cry from just 25 years ago when 99% of all movies were seen
> in theaters.
> Times are changing. . .and the previous powers-that-be know that:
> "uneasy lies the head that wears a crown" and all that.
> Thus they pass extended copyright laws to keep us from copying
> what would be legal without such, and then complain that the
> world is stealing their copyrighted materials when it is they
> who pirated the public domain.
 
I don't think of it as being rich enough to do what you want.  Because
nobody is really.  Look at what just happened to Google.  Loosinhg 11 billion
in one day.  If you want historical precident to what the mdia companiues are 
doing with their public domain grabs, then you only have to look at the 
enclosure in England of the commons.  And as you (Michael Hart) have written 
about copyright extensions.

> >Then your problem is to set the price high enough so that people will value 
> 
> >the product you are selling but low enough to attract impulse buying.
> 
> Ah, so you don't want people to actually THINK about buying your product,
> just to buy it mindlessly, an "impulse buy?"
> Somehow this is not a refreshing concept when I consider eBooks.
> It would be nice if they didn't have to think too much about the cost,
> but not to think at all, an "impulse" purchase at the checkout line?
> Hmmm.

They buy it because of the value they see in the product.  Today I purchased 
a 50 movie past of Historical Classic Movies for $19.95.  I already owned 
two of the movies in the collection and I had already in the past had seen two 
additional ones.   So I determined that there was still enough value in the 
collection to make me buy it.  I was an impulse buy but I did think about 
buying it.

> True, but there are other reasons for setting high prices,
> perhaps the most notable among them is the "elitist factor."


That is indeed true along with the "snob appeal" as a factor.

> Not to mention the "early high profits" factor.
> How many businesses failed to make a decent profit by pricing too high? 
> More than failed by pricing too low. 
> You can always raise the price of a popularly selling item
> to make higher profits.
> You can't always lower the price of something that is not selling
> to make higher profits.
> And there are hundreds more products that never even got as
> much publicity that we never heard of.

Until TI came along with their learning curve I can't recall any business 
man or economist actually saying that you could make more money by lowering
the price rather than raising it.

> >I would say that the going price to maximize your profits with DVD movies is 
> >somewhere between $7and $15 for the U.S. markets.  Now to being this back to 
> >ebooks.  Based on my experience if you have 20,000 to 50,000 ebooks in your 
> >DVD collection then you could sell just about everything you have for $50 for
> >the DVD collection.  If you sell it for between $50 and $100 you will make 
> >the most money.  Anything higher than that you won't make nearly as much.
> 
> I think this would make a good research project:
> 
> Make the same materials available through different brand names,
> at prices from $19.95 to $99.95 and see how well each sells.
> 

Actually I have done this but it was from free to $40 to $65 and $99.95.  I 
sold the most at $65.  

David Reed