On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 5:16 PM, Jean-Christophe Helary <[email protected]> wrote:
> I think it would be simpler is the system forced a single low price on all > the models (like $2) and show by selling tons of stuff that authors who > accept that get way more money (since the purpose here is to sell) than > authors who set their price much higher. I think iTunes has certainly shown that for music and applications, a very low price is by far the best pricing model to maximize author return and has set market expectations /in that industry/. Unfortunately, iTunes has something that the origami community doesn't: a market base of 500 million people. While it is possible that the optimal price point for origami diagrams is $1 or $2, it may very well be higher considering that the origami community is actually quite small. Setting a single flat price for all items would not "show" us anything about what diagrams are actually worth to consumers, and is almost guaranteed /not/ to be the optimal price. Unfortunately, right now we do not know the optimal price point because no one has sold individual diagrams online before on a large scale. Hopefully, with OrigamiUSA's pilot project, we can start to collect some basic, /currently unknown/ information about the origami marketplace. (Note that we can only get this information if the origami community /uses/ this service, so go buy and sell! :P) But even when we have such information, I'm not really sure why we would want to enforce mandatory pricing. If an author is aware of the optimal market rate to maximize return selling a type of diagram (a rate which I stress has /not yet been established/) and still chooses to set a different price, I would argue that such a preference should be accommodated in an online store. Maximizing return is not the only variable effecting an author's price choice, and OrigamiUSA's current model leaves such freedom with the author. -Jason Ku Board Member, OrigamiUSA The Fold Managing Editor, OrigamiUSA http://origamiusa.org/thefold http://jasonku.scripts.mit.edu/
