Recoil

For years I've been subscribing to Johnn Four's Roleplayingtips.com mailing list. Today I was thumbing through the latest edition and this advertisement caught my eye:

How to Create a Believable Character

Inside this ebook, you'll discover:
* The 5 key elements that make up a believable character's appearance - including details that you may be forgetting
* The 3 categories of abilities that you must develop in your character in mind, body and spirit.
* The 6 background features that all well-developed characters have (miss one, and your character suffers)
* The 5 personality layers that transform the idea of a character into a three-dimensional profile to help your character take on a life of his (or her) own
* The single, simplest method that helps your character take that crucial first breath and begin developing into the right fit for your story

Start Creating Your Own Memorable Characters Today: http://www.roleplayingtips.com/url/captufantasy

I'm leaving the link as the original so that everytime someone clicks it, Johnn gets a nickel. Go on, take a peek.

Now, if you're like me, you're pretty much inured to Internet advertisement - you're so used to ignoring it that you automatically scroll past it without a second glance. Why did this catch my eye? There was no flashing banner, no really clever wording. What I think it is, is that's exactly the sort of thing I would be interested in, and that part of my mind is subconsciously scanning topics even as I think I'm ignoring all the ads. Free in-borwser MMORPG? Pass. Dating site with the same three girls online at [current time] within five miles of [current location]? Yeah, right. I'm the 10,000th visitor! Again! Not likely. Ebook on creating characters? That sounds like a quality product worthy of my time and attention.

So, I click on the link, and it basically takes you to a bigger, shinier version of the ad on the publisher's own website. It all looks like good stuff. They have all these numbers and categories, it looks like the book is going to have a really comprehensive scope, this seems like a valuable product.

And then I see the price.

$11.99

WHAT?!

I recoiled, instantly, viscerally, almost physically. I immediately had a list of reasons not to buy that thing. It's probably nothing I haven't already heard. I could probably write it myself in an hour or two. Or I could find advice just as good online for free, or at a public library. Over several minutes, the value had risen in my mind from "unknown" to "possibly worth having," and then in a heartbeat, it dropped to "pfft."

This observation of my own reaction will probably come in handy when I try to set a price for my product. Profitiability and fame aren't my main concerns, but they're nice if they're on the menu. How, then do I prevent that recoil?

Correct Pricing
For one thing, charging $11.99 for a 19-page e-pamphlet of what is likely to ammount to mostly common knowledge and common sense, with perhaps some original insight, is pretty out there. Most fully-illustrated RPG core manuals weigh in at around 300 pages and the MSRP for a physical book - which involved trees and ink and and shipping and everything - is usually $29.99. If White Wolf or WotC came out with a glorious 300-page PDF and sold it online, it would probably cost less. Electronic versions are automatically worth less, because there's less overhead, more competition, and a high incentive for piracy.

Finding the Threshhold
There's got to be a specific limit to how much money someone will willingly pay for a product. Some people will pay $100 for a pair of sunglasses, and other people laugh at those people. This cost-benefit ratio is different for each person: to some people, those sunglasses are worth $100; for a millionaire $100 is worth less than it is to normal people, because it represents a smaller percentage of their capital (seriously, I should have studied economics - I'm digging this stuff). When I was trying to sell kitchen knives, I sucked at it, and my boss told me, "Stop thinking that the customers are you." I wouldn't, or, actually, would but couldn't throw down $800 for a hot set of cutlery, while for some people, that's an impulse buy. How close the cost is to someone's internal value for the product probably also has to do with whether they buy it at the drop of a hat, with a little persuasion, or only after serious thought.

There is no price at which everyone will buy.
Even free. I was just reading recently, I forget where, but they compared page views to the number of downloads of a free ebook, and it turns out that a lot of people will not even lift a finger to click on a link. And that's fine, until they start taxing air, there's nothing that absolutley everyone will buy, even if the cost is just a few seconds of their day.

When I go to print, I'll probably offer a print-on-demand physical version and a print-and-screen-friendly e-version. I just wish there were a good way of gauging the 'value' of it before I send it out there, so I don't accidentally sell it for a lot less than it could go for, or set the price so high that I scare off potential players. I guess that's what market research is.