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Comment by Havoc | Hacker News Reader

The same dynamics play out in everything from YouTube to onlyfans. A very small group make tons of money and are very visible and the other 99% make no money but nobody notices them. And that’s slanted perception pulls in more people driving up supply

But yeah books seem particularly brutal. The vast majority of my books were acquired at just over a dollar. Amazon daily sales and lots of patience. Even the big names have discounts that deep. I’m glad to have them but that is pretty brutal economics

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This is way some countries like Germany have fixed book prices. They set a minimum price that the book needs to be sold at.

This helps authors and also prevents smaller book shops from being out competed by price.

It is a pretty great system. Sure German books tend to be significantly more expensive than the English counter part but its not like I don't have already enough books in my pile of shame. And for those tight on money there is always libraries.

I don’t think that logic works well with digital goods. Because there is zero marginal cost, you always want more purchases even if the price is incredibly low.

And digital goods can be infinitely large. Conceivably the combined works of JK Rowling or Tolkien could be sold as a single unit. Therefore able to cut beneath a minimum price.

The zero marginal cost makes fixed prices even more important.

You production cost per unit is basically the cost of creating the book. The more units you sell, the lower the production cost per unit. So bestsellers make bank and are profitable even when sold at extremely low prices.

In comparison a book with a limited niche will need to sell at a way higher price to be profitable.

People will only buy a fixed amount of books. The idea is to give books of niche audiences a fighting chance.

> Conceivably the combined works of JK Rowling or Tolkien could be sold as a single unit.

Yes there is always pitfalls and loopholes to watch out for when defining such laws. I don't really see how this adds much to the discussion, as something like that would clearly violate the spirit and intention of the law. If it is legally possible it is because the law is implemented badly. Which could be but is another discussion.

> In comparison a book with a limited niche will need to sell at a way higher price to be profitable.

The internet brings a huge amount of people to even the smallest niches.

In porn, niche fetish content is pretty much the same price as vanilla stuff on onlyfans, clips4sale etc. There are a couple of exceptions, but when I think about it, they generally correlate to production cost rather than niche size.

If I did a book for money (bad idea yes!) I'd try at least to self publish and make it a premium thing with upsells. Like the Total Typescript course.

Selling 100 for $50 (no mean feat but still modest) copies would probably beat any publisher earnings!

You could also get away with less perfect grammar etc. BYO editor or just edit yourself. The goal is to teach after all.

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