We have expectations of value in response to price. I was down at Kelly Sheet Metal and ordered a three sided object to cover the ice trays in my freezer. I wasn't sure of what the fair price should be, but when they said $25 I was happy, but walking back to the car, thinking of how long it would take them to do it, the value of the worker's time and the cost of materials, and the value of them being there, rather than off making Revolutionary Era Furniture (the value of them just idling around waiting for me or other customers) I came up with $20.
Sure enough, when I showed up today there it was with a $20 ticket on it. If, at the beginning they had said $50 I might have walked. Fifty sounded too high. If, when I went to pick it up they had said $30 I would have paid it, rather than try to haggle. It may well have been a fair price and who was I to say no.
All this leads to this blog site, where the blogger says that the market clearing price on a Kindle is 99¢.
And, with the Kindle it is there in your hot little hand just a couple of minutes later, literally two or three minutes later you are opening it up and reading.
Hat tip to the Instapundit.
Regards — Cliff
2 comments:
I'm sure you meant "Kindle book" and not just the Kindle. ( Though I'm sure 99 cents would clear the market of Kindles, too).
I'm eagerly awaiting the day when musicians figure this one out, too. When I had access to music sufficiently far less than 99 cents per song, as I did back when amiestreet.com was still around, I spent a good $30-$50 a month on music. Now that I have only the "full price" option, I'm spending well less than half that amount, to the collective impoverishment of musicians everywhere, not to mention my own personal musical appetite as well.
Yes, books on the Kindle, not the Kindle itself.
And, spot on about music. For a long time I have thought that the music industry missed the boat about the time tapes, or at least CDs came along. Before that we were buying 45s with a great song on the obverse and some clinker on the flip side. With tape, or at least CDs, we should have been able to go into a booth and listen to a bunch of songs and then give ourselves a selection of a half dozen or so songs, from a mix of genres and artists, as we saw fit. At a reasonable price.
In my mind it is like taxes on cigs. Make them high enough and folks won't stop smoking. They will start smuggling. The music industry made the prices high enough that we created a market for smugglers, or pirates in this case. Not an ethical thing on the part of the music pirates, but a fact of economic life. Blame it all on Adam Smith.
Regards — Cliff
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