On Thu, 9 Nov 1995, Timothy C. May wrote:
At 6:51 PM 11/9/95, Bill Frantz wrote:
BTW - I don't think we should be talking about a penny/page cost because it is way too high for the current market. For example, my copy of Applied Cryptography V2 cost about $.067/page AND came with the media to keep it "forever". My (used) copy of Snow Crash cost closer to a penny/page and also came with the media. I would think that somewhere between 1/100 to 1/10 of a penny/page is closer to the current market value of the page content.
With all due respect to Bill--his mention of agorics tells me he knows something about computational ecologies and markets--, there is no reasonable way to say what price is "closer to the current market value of the page content," except by what the market will bear!
Yes, a paperback novel is a penny a page or so. But a 5-page consultant's report that sells for $2000 has a "market value" to someone of $400 a page. You can all think of all kinds of other examples.
Actually, Tim, there are many examples we each could think of. As an example, I'm presently preparing an unsolicited Security Review report for a Fortune 500 company. It's *priced* if you will in the mid five figure range per page (and that includes the title page, the appendices, and the pages which say on them, "this page left intentionally blank"). (It's the short report ... the one which references RFC's rather than including them. The report that includes RFC's is priced significantly lower when measured by weight ... i.e. cost/page metering.) But the report's information value is truly *worth* a factor many, many hundreds of times what the invoice rate bears or what the cost per page would indicate. For me, my current report is in fact a loss leader. Since my report IS unsolicited, I really don't even have any real expectation that the invoice will be approved for payment. My invoice is not submitted on that basis. I realize that I might not even receive re-imbursement for my out-of-pocket expenses. The beneficiary might well think that the information is only worth the value of a promotional mug or of a promo T-shirt, or maybe even worthless. Alternatively, the company might offer a complementary copy of their product or even just info-freeload as Netscape did with those Berkeley hombre stud-muffins, some time ago. But the information within my unsolicited report is hopefully utilized none the less, no matter what financial consideration is extended, because the information is _actually_ priceless, even though the recipient might consider that information to have only a nominal or "no, or little compensable value". Information is interesting that way. Because information is/was provided to them "freely" most firms will not (generally) see any value in the information at all. They happily become information free-loaders. It's paradoxical and ironic in an information age. The huge bill I send out is, literally, the reality check. No honest person would expect to take a dress home from a shop without paying, but a lot of normally honest folk don't give a thought to taking an armload of free information. Which I guess is an interesting segueway into a basic briefing on "information value" theory. But that part will have to hold for a bit ... once I collect my thoughts on how information philistines and information connoisseurs have differing value judgments. The implications might surprise people. Alice de 'nonymous ... ...just another one of those... P.S. This post is in the public domain. C. S. U. M. O. C. L. U. N. E.