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The book took 8 years to make. He died in Oct 2011. He probably knew about it.

The problem is not the book, the problem is the pricing for the book which he had nothing to do with.

At 30$ or 300$ the company is not going to get meaningful revenue, or likely enough to pay the cost of production back. So, the pricing needs to relate to something else.

The point of the book wasn't to juice the "Other revenue" line in their quarterly report, it was to produce a high-end art book of their design work. It actually makes more sense as a high dollar item considering that allows it to be made with high quality materials and become a collectors item. At $30 it would probably be junk, uninteresting to collectors/designers and the mass market alike.

The argument is they could use the same materials and sell it for 30$. At 300$ they are already going to be out millions. So, the difference in price is just not going to be meaningful until they start selling 30,000+ copies.

The bugatti veyron for example sells for ~$1.5 million, but it costs more than twice that to make ($6.25 million). However, as VW only sold ~50 veyron's per year it's was just not an issue for VW compared to the 10.14 million cars they sold per year.

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