How much do you want to pay?
We were inspired by something John Buckman is doing at the online record label Magnatune. When you buy a CD, Magnatune asks "How much do you want to pay?" and gives you a price menu. You can't pay nothing, but you get some latitude. You can low-ball them a bit, or, if you're feeling grateful, pay more.It sounded like a fun idea to us. We've had people—and not a few—pay twice to thank us. But we've also had emails from people who say they'll buy a membership next time they get their pay check, disability, etc. That kills us, so we've given out a lot of "pending" membership.*
The "typical" amount is the old fixed amount: $10 for a year's membership, $25 for a lifetime membership. I'm dying to find out if we take a bath, break even or pick up a few extra bucks. Anyway, we're going to try it out until Valentine's day at least. (Speaking of which, don't forget the ten-million book/Valentine's day/President's day bookpile contest.)
We learned about Magnatune's idea watching a Japanese piece on John Buckman on YouTube. Buckman was in Japan to speak at the New Context Conference 2006. The guy in the cowboy hat interview him in English, added highlights from his talk, and explanatory wrapper in Japanese. (Here he explains the pricing idea, but those are the only English words, so I have no idea what he says about it.)
Buckman is, of course, also the founder of BookMooch, the largest book-swapping site out there.** LibraryThing and Bookmooch have warm relations—lots of shared users and mutual linking—and I've spoken to Buckman a few times. He "gets it," so we're happy to borrow an idea from him.* My favorite "pending" account was the U. S. diplomat in central Asia, who wondered if she could pay us when she rotated back and we couldn't offered to send us a check via diplomatic pouch. I really want to send a CueCat via diplomatic pouch!
** Judged by Alexa traffic (28,185 vs. 31,032 for PBS on 2/10), not that Alexa means much. PaperbackSwap has been around longer, and may have more members, but it's a walled garden and, we think, not going anywhere until it opens up.
posted by Tim at 6:17 PM
35 Comments:
You should consider letting people sponsor other people or having a good way for that mechanism to happen. In fact, I'd gladly pony up $50 just so you could give the next two people who asked a lifetime membership (or the next five yearly memberships).
This happens every now and then on MetaFilter where people can't or wont find the $5 it takes to enroll and most of the time the goodwill you engender just flipping them a free (or sponsored) account leads to a really happy "customer." Email me and I'll send you some cash to set up a "Sponsor a New Thinger" program. I bet you could give aaway a free yearly membership every week without it costing you a cent.
I can't see the dropdown box where you can select how much you want to pay. Where is it?
I wouldn't have thought twice about paying $50.00 for a lifetime membership. If you had asked for $100.00, I would have paused, looked at my checking account balance, grumbled a bit, then sent you the money.
I'd be amenable to smallish contributions to a scholarship fund
So much library thing love - how nice... :)
Didn't the advertisers Sacchi and Sacchi charge their clients in this way back in the '80's in the UK?
I.E. 'Pay us how much you think we were worth.'
Congratulations! It would be so nice if in passing you could add support for payment with Moneybookers, http://moneybookers.com, one of the two internet merchants accepted by Wikipedia (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising)
Oh man, I can't believe you are making this offer right after I finally decided to sent you $25.00 for a lifetime membership. But you know, Its O.K. - LibraryThing is worth it.
I agree that for some users (think how much we spend on books!) US$50 is not so extraordinary. Special perks for big donors might also work, although it's undemocratic, as long as they were symbolic (i.e. special thank-you page, but not more clout). Sponsoring other memberships is a lovely idea!
What do you mean by the PaperBackSwap "walled garden" comment? I'm just curious, not trying to start a debate or anything. I recently joined PaperBackSwap and swapped a few books.
I mean this, where Bookmooch has all sorts of APIs, PBS has none. Bookmooch does not require exclusivity in its partner relatioships.
In LibraryThing's case, we have a swap program open to anyone and free of charge. You give us an API to your data, so we can show what's available, and, in turn, you allow joint members to use LibraryThing to track the books they've received. Swap sites that participate--eight now--are shown on a special page.
LibraryThing discussed the program with PBS first of all the sites, but we couldn't deal with their demand--that it be an exclusive arrangement, open to PBS users only, with no links to its competitors.
To our delight, Bookmooch opened up shortly afterward, and quickly shot into first place. John, with long experience with openness at Magnatune, had no problem competing with his competitors.
Ultimately, I see PBS as a very "Web 1.0" business. They don't get the core values of todays web application—openness and respect for your customers.
The other thing about PBS is that they're U.S.-only. I recently used my last credit and don't intend to use their services again, especially now that I'm in Europe. Bookmooch, here I come!
The "pay what you think we're worth" idea is an interesting reversal of Edward Bernays' observation that clients of his public relations consulting were more likely to follow his advice the more he charged them for it.
$25 is cheap. I pay it forward by giving away gift memberships. I think I'm up to five. Plus all the people I've evangelised to who've paid themselves :)
The "pay what you can" concept is a killer app indeed.
It is good to see that the smart book people are embracing it.
The music industry has made a big fool out of itself with their war on downloaders. There is a Web2.0 lesson here for them to learn.
Yet, the music industry corporations are running on
Web .00000001.1
They never heard of a paperback
Compact Disk. Distribution of a product or service to a maximum amount of customers has always been the name-of-the-game.
Next moment after you add some Russian libraries I would pay $56 :) just to celebrate it :)
Actually, I remember when I hit 400 books being so excited by LibraryThing that I looked for a 'donate' button on the site. Maybe you could do that.
Jane Siberry has been doing this with her music since late 2005 - including the option to pay nothing.
http://sheeba.ca/
Well, we're not going to do that. It's funny, while many people go over, a fair number do the lowest option. Makes me grit my teeth a bit, I must admit ;)
I have to admit that I sort of don't get this. Why would you pay more unless it got you something more? I am willing to pay more for organic potatoes because I perceive them to be better than ones laced with pesticide. LT is just LT.
The only reason one would pay more, it seems to me, is the thought that paying more makes it more likely for LT to succeed, thus securing your work in filling in all your books. Some people are just grateful and have some extra bucks to shed, and that's fine, but that's the minority.
Psychologists note that if you've expended a lot of effort or money on something, the higher you value it, partly because you've sunk a lot of cost into it and don't want to lost that. Is paying more for LT working on this aspect of our minds?
But it's weird that a person would choose to just pay more. It would be an interesting experiment to expose people to the same LT site, and tell them they were gifted an account. One group would be told it was free, the other say it cost someone else $25, another group told it cost $125. The last group should enjoy the site better than the others. But unless placed in that last group, I don't know if that idea holds.
But of course a lot of people are just going to pick the lowest option.
Hi Tim,
I'm sorry that people paying the lowest amount makes you grit your teeth.
I truly appreciate that you've offered your unpaid users this Valentine's option. Maybe there are people who can afford a lot more who are cackling greedily even as they take advantage of your generosity to pay less than LT is worth. Please be assured that there are others - like those you mentioned in this blog entry; like me - for whom even $19 is a lot of money.
I happen to have a chronic illness and it's a struggle to pay the bills every month. I *shouldn't* be spending money on treats like a lifetime membership. But... I read a lot when I can and it's nice to have a record of even such minor accomplishments once the books go back to the library or other lenders. LT gives me an easy way to keep that record and I appreciate your work on it. I - and, I'm sure, many others - just can't show our appreciation monetarily.
_ Isa (new lifetime member)
I'm pretty sure most folks would pick the lowest option. And I'm leery of donating to "gift accounts" since there is no way to decide "need." other than who has the best story.
What I could get behind is librarything members sponsoring a library in a community with a very low literacy rate. Say, $25 lifetime membership or $35 to go to Podunk Public Library. Although I can imagine most folks would like for it to go to their local community, there are some frighteningly poor counties. My grandmother devoted 20 years to her local Friends of the Library just to try to get decent books there. Since they recently put the 10 Commandments up in their courthouse, I can't say she has helped much, but it would be cool to have the library that LibraryThing built.
Heck, I'm moving soon, while I'll probably donate my books to the local FoTL, I'd love to send them someplace where they could be read by folks that may not have much reading choice.
No, thank you for reminding me. The point is to get people to pay what they can. So if $25 is a lot, $19 is better.
I think of it as rather like the way the Met works. The recommended prices are posted everywhere, but they are only recommendations. The trick is, you need a ticket. So if you want to enter for free, you need to walk up to a counter and tell some attractive and no doubt underpaid young art student that you're not willing to pay for one of the greatest museums in the world.
No, I'm not REALLY comparing LT to the Met.
I wonder if one obstacle to generosity may be the word "BETA" on the LibraryThing logo?
I understand why you view LT as a perpetual beta, and don't have any argument with that. However, most folks are used to paying little or nothing for beta software, since their participation actually helps the developers perfect their product.
(This is one reason I don't feel too guilty about having paid "only" $10 for a lifetime membership back in the very early days of LT. However informal my participation may have been at that stage, I really was deeply involved in beta testing... and I have the lost data to prove it :-)
So who is the attractive underpaid young art student? Me or Abby?
Must not be me -- I'm not, um, an art student :-)
Are you fishing for compliments again, John?
Not a God Damn thing. Information wants to be free. Or how about this compromise: One cent off per book entered, and one dollar per review. Under that eminently fait scheme, you now owe $465 PLUS $575 PLUS the $150 that you lost to me in Lithuania. When does the next Abe check arrive?
Anonymous is you brother, who obviously can't type very well ("fait"?) tonight.
Also, see "you". I will give up now.
Hey, what happens in Lithuania *stays* in Lithuania!
Meanwhile, I'm not John, and haven't been for a while. Unfortunately, Google Analytics is in under his name, and now Blogger uses Google sign-ins. Arg.
On 02/14/07 thelee said "Psychologists note that if you've expended a lot of effort or money on something, the higher you value it..." Yes, some therapists have used this rationale in order to justify high fees. but there is no solid scientific evidence that it actually helps. There's a lot of research and a lot of serious discussion and debate in the psych field about what does and does not work. This ain't it, and we should stop perpetuating the myth. Feel free to check out the books in my catalog with the tag "evidence-based practice." End of my harangue. Peace!
Well, I didn't mean to be anonymous. I'm kathi.
I think there must be at least the minimal link. That is, I think LibraryThing would be less valued if it were free. (We'd also be belly up.) Paying something for a web service turns preference into loyalty, a user into a customer, etc.
As a poor student, I wanted to thank you for this feature. Hopefully, one day I'll have a job again and perhaps then can donate more money.
Cheers!
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