MickLinux's Journal: PUBLIC DOMAIN... free (LT:laisves) content sales website

Okay, here goes. My idea here is a website that sells content (music, books, even what I call 'single-page publishing'... more about that later) at exponentially decreasing prices. So, say, you record a new CD of songs. Cost of recording the songs (about 10 CDs worth) and mixing them is $500 in Lithuania. In the end you end up with one CD of music. Instead, why not sell both the parts and the mix, at exponentially decreasing prices, for example: $50 for the first copy. $50x0.8=$40 for the second copy... and so on. But the kicker is that they buyer gets to sell and redistribute his copy as well -- free. Now, check this out: people will want the music-only version; trumpeters will want the trumpet-only version; and so on. So your first copy is $50x10=$500. Second copy $400. Third copy $320. Fourth $256. So after four sales, you've already made $1466, far more than the $500 for recording.

Of course, this was suggested by a Nobel prize winner, but my key idea, of course, is to do this online, everything according to standard online sales methods already in use (including auction, direct sale, and so on and so forth). By computer you set the initial price; you set the %decrease, you adjust the price if you think it is too high or too low. You make everything available for download, or allow a person to request a copy shipped to them. High priority for downloads, of course, goes to the highest dollar per MB, so a person who lower priority can also opt to pay more than the minimum, in order to raise his priority. Ideally, such "overpayments" should be go to setting up mirrors, since they indicate that the bandwidth is too low.

And, of course, the first item of content would be new copies of this website (perl scripts, and such) and instructions on how to set it up. For sale, open source, but free.

Also... that single page publishing bit. Authors often have an idea on a better way to teach a single week of a whole course. Why not let them publish? Then, as more material becomes available, other professors can indicate which materials they can use (also published via single-page publishing.) Then, as one group of materials gets commonly used, yet another person can compile them all into a book.

Now, for single page publishing, if you're going to allow the material to be free, your advantage is going to have to be cheaper printing. So that means you need to use offset printing, or digital offset printing, to keep a minimum supply of each page on hand. Then, when people order and you run out of stock, you run off more copies. By doing things this way, you minimize taxation and overprint destruction.