How many pages does the book have? Even with the discount: $30 is way too much for a tech book IMO. Maybe $20 would be doable.
Time to start valuing books based on knowledge contained rather than paper weight.
People are price-sensitive. Their expectations--derived from pricing observed for similar books--is that a book's "retail" price would be somewhere between $20-$30. A book that's nearly $40 is almost unheard of. Additionally, this is especially true for "self-published" books. We expect them to be cheaper because their distribution/production costs are cheaper (or at least we perceive them to be cheaper) and we acknowledge that often self-published books don't have expensive, but quality-assuring, intermediates like editors. In other words, a self-published book is a much greater unknown quantity than one from a publisher which has been edited etc. Plenty of books from publishers suck, but an even greater proportion of self-published books suck.
If I was a web developer using Meteor, I imagine I would come to a similar conclusion about this book - with the exception that because it's online, the authors can update it over time.
Where did you get that? He explicitly said that "if the information contained is proven to be valuable and well-expressed than yes, I agree, $39 (or even $99 or whatever) is totally worth it." He literally said the exact opposite of what you are alleging that he said. Literally.
His shock was in regards to the fact that the offer no sample chapter (which they probably should).
I was confused by his phrasing. I thought he meant it was an unknown quantity because he had not read it.
The main point I was attempting to make is that some of those (perhaps a very small minority) interested in learning Meteor operate on very tight budgets. On a good month I get a $50 "allowance." Most months I don't get an allowance. This month my wife agreed to take the cost of the Discover Meteor book out of our grocery budget. So when things are that tight, $30 or $40 is a lot to swing. It's roughly 10% of our grocery budget (for context).
For those who make their living as web developers and have sufficient disposable income, I'm sure the asking price of $39 isn't a problem.
http://www.discovermeteor.com/sample/DiscoverMeteor-Template...
The issue is that the overwhelming majority of technical people don't live in SF, nor will they ever earn SF rates.
It's absurd that people insist on projecting the economic situation of an incomprehensibly small subset of programmers that are lucky enough to reside in a hot market onto the entire cohort of developers. Most people don't make $100 per hour, and even if they do, other aspects of life are quite expensive (car, house, school). I don't understand why people can't comprehend that some people make modest salaries or don't have limitless disposable income.
$30 isn't necessarily the world (and many people will certainly receive positive value), but it's still a hefty expense that requires one to gauge value. Asserting that someone is wrong to be hesitant about buying the book is presumptuous.
People buy things based on cost, and strive to preserve their money and maximize value. What is so upsetting about that?
Nearly $40 is a lot for an unknown quantity for someone like me who is convinced that Meteor is a big deal, but who is also learning web development from the ground-up. And yes, I should probably start with something a little easier for a beginner to rap their head around.
But there really are people like me out there who are interested in learning Meteor for whom $39 (or $30) represents a lot of money. I'm a grad student, working part-time for $14/hour, with a homemaker wife and baby. My allowance, when I can get it, is $50 a month. Yep, that's how some of us roll.
So maybe sharing that sheds some light on how and why someone (like me) might be price sensitive--even when it seems ridiculous to others who make a LOT more money.
That said, after getting the expense approved by my wife, I did actually take advantage of the $30 launch list price and am currently working my way through the book. The first 28 pages have been worthwhile. I like that, similar to the Hartl Rails Tutorial, it attempts to cover the whole development life cyle including deploying locally, to Meteor, to Heroku, and to EC2, etc. For beginners like me who really crave learning about the whole process, this is a boon.
For me, the issue is time: why should I spend time learning this framework, versus all the other frameworks that I see showing up a few times a week on HN?
If you convince me that my time is worth it, I'd pay $60 as easily as I'd pay $20.
That said, I think the meteor platform looks like the "next big thing" and I'm excited to learn it from this book or elsewhere.