CompuServe Messages

Rich, I hear you, but I believe there is another factor at work…Very few people really believe in price elasticity. Down there in their guts the people at OUP really don't believe that there are a million people who would spring $49.95 for the OED. They think they would end up selling twice as many copies at one tenth the price, and lose their shirts. I've seen this phenomenon every time the _cost_ of something falls drastically–the old players never see the profit to be gained by passing along the benefit. OTOH, with our disk, _giving_ it away would (at least so far) have been of minimal help–on three out of four sales so far the customer (a New Hampshire lawyer) has had to go out and buy a computer not just a CDROM drive in order to use the darn thing. Thus it was already a big ticket item even before our price. I don't have a good answer. Frank BTW, why not hit up Discovery for a cut of the royalties _they're_ getting, to cover your efforts on their behalf?