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Comment by Revisor | Hacker News Reader

I can heartily recommend the book The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0136106811/

It's pretty expensive as far as books go, but very much worth it. It not only explains how to set a price, but also how to set different prices across segments, how to calculate/estimate value your product is worth to your customers, how to price differently over time (honoring the changing business cycle) and how to react to competition (a very short summary: add value, target more segments, don't go into a price war and instead force the others out of it by restructuring your offer or by adding "threats" ("we'll match the best price" etc.)).

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Wow, I'm surprised that a book on pricing is so expensive. Since they're the experts, perhaps they think that all books would be more profitable if they were priced higher. I wonder if many books are priced lower because they hope to get on a bestseller list.

I can second Nagle's book. They could charge its weight in gold, and it would still be worth every penny. Where Davidson's freebie gives you the lay of the land on pricing and talks a bit about some dynamics, Nagle's "Strategy and Tactics" covers the details in some depth. You learn how to deploy pricing as part of your marketing strategy. They not only back up their points with detailed examples, but they explain why the pricing worked (or didn't) as it did. Simply invaluable.

For the OP, I would also recommend "Blue Ocean Strategy": http://amzn.com/1591396190 . The authors address how to move beyond mere competition, and pricing is one of those ways.

If the advice in that particular book is correct, then any entrepreneur who spends $100 on it will recoup the cost fairly soon.

If the buyer is a college student rather than an entrepreneur, well, the cover price is comparable to the price of other college textbooks. Textbook publishers can get away with charging a lot because students have to buy whatever the professor says to buy, and because once they’re borrowing tens of thousands of dollars for tuition and living expenses, students will not balk at a few more kilobucks for their books.

You are correct. Most of my physics books are at least 2 times as expensive as that book :(

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