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Comment by sivers | Hacker News Reader

Yeah. Originally I was going to price them at $200 each.

("For the cost of one night in a Hong Kong hotel, this will save you weeks or even months of research.")

Definitely only of interest to someone really planning on setting up a business in one of these countries in the next year or so.

I often drop $39 on random Ruby, JavaScript, or web design ebooks.

That said, now that I've tried the $50 price point, I might try something much cheaper next year just to see what happens. If I do, then all the people who bought it at $50 this year will get it free next year.

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> I often drop $39 on random Ruby, JavaScript, or web design ebooks.

I'm sure you do, but unlike me, you're rich. I practically never buy any books, but I'm interested in buying your guides.

When I first saw the $50, I was a bit disappointed and felt like it was expensive, especially for an independently published PDF.

Then I realized that I do want one reasonably bad, and that each book is potentially highly valuable, so I guess the $50 price can be considered justified. It's just that I'd like to buy several, but I'm not sure I'm comfortable doing so at that price point.

Pricing anything is always a challenge. I suppose you have two audiences, people seriously considering setting up a funded startup in one of those countries, and general knowledge seekers (just about all hackers and HN regulars).

Another idea for this, since it sounds like this series might get yearly updates, is high-priced lifetime subscription 1-time fee, and a low-priced non-subscription cost for just this year's version.

Edit: On second thought, maybe not. Someone buying one of these to set up a startup probably won't have a multiyear need for them.

I guess my use case is probably an outlier, I'm thinking about living in one of these countries and checking out which options might work and where (which could be anything from freelancing to taking a corporate gig). But I'd unscientifically guess there could be a market in idle speculators, rather then people with a clear plan to do a startup in a specific country (who might already have gathered a lot of this info to have got to that point).

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