Quote: (03-24-2010 09:42 PM)Roosh Wrote:
1.
It's different for every product, but I do believe piracy creates sales IF you have a quality product. For example stay Stu pirates my book, reads it, and likes it. He posts on some seduction forum that "Bang was a great book." Ten people take to that statement and 2 end up buying it (while the rest pirate it who knows). In this case it did create sales. Also when I come up with a new book, Stu may well decide to support it by buying it. Also I once had a day game student (paid about $200) who admitted he pirated my book. Now if I see my book on some share site I send a DMCA takedown of course, but I'm not freaking out about it. As long as it's easier to buy my book through the normal channel instead of pirating it, I think it'll work out in the end. Keep in mind that some guys download gigs of crap but never even read. They wouldn't have bought my book anyway.
Think of paperback books. I have given made paperback books to people and maybe they passed it on. Five people can end up reading that one copy, yet the author only gets one sale out of it. Should each of those five people have to buy the book? If you download Bang and you forward it to your wingman, should I get upset about that? A little bit of piracy can spread your message and get more people into your work who wouldn't otherwise.
2. Before I offered the Bang ebook, someone scanned the whole thing and had it up on some sites. And in the pickup scene my book isn't "huge". If you are the only product in a niche market and there is demand for it, someone will scan the book. RSD put out The Nine Ball, a paperback, and the scanned version is floating around. You really can't defeat piracy entirely, so how can you use it in your favor? In Brazil, bands like Calypso and Djavu give away their music for free on their websites and to street vendors. And then they make money on the concerts. They don't sell albums at all, only live DVD videos.
3. You'll just have to experiment. Do split testing with Google Website Optimizer. Pricing products is an art and right now I can't say that the price of Bang maximizes revenue and sales. You'll just have to go with your gut and be willing to make adjustments depending on what the market is telling you.
$100 sounds crazy to me, but if your product is what you say it is then I think people would want to save $200 for something they need. In the end you can do what I did with Bang... offer the paperback first, and then take baby steps into the water.
Thanks for your perspective.
I've been reading through techdirt.
A lot of the "new business model" philosophy is similarly put forth in "The New Rules of Marketing and PR" by David Meerman Scott, which I read a little while ago. There are some good tips in that book, and its worth picking up, or at least reading in the bookstore. You can likely remember all of the salient points from one reading. But like I said, similar to the techdirt admins perspective.
Essentially, the less barriers to high quality free content, the better. For both trust and sales. For instance, its better to offer an free e-paper / whitepaper download without email registration than with. Analyzing the way I use websites, that strikes me as exactly right. Whether I choose to go the e-book route or not, I'll be working toward the goal of easy to access and copious content.
In the niche I'm in, $100 bucks isn't uncommon, with higher prices more common. The price point alone gives higher motivation to pirates, which is something I have to consider if offering an electronic copy.
I haven't noticed scanned copies of some of the better products that I own in this genre, but thats not to say that they don't exist. My book / product is exceptionally long, which may or may not be a deterrent to scanners.
Anyway, baby steps. I'll likely test the waters slowly with each format.
Thanks again for the reply.