The cost of information
Aspen Publishing's Federal Judiciary Library Online (pointer by Ernie) is being offered for $1,900. No doubt this is a premium product commanding a premium price. But Aspen is clueless about pricing of internet-accessible material. It would be able to sell fifty times the number of subscriptions if the price were $400, and a thousand times the number if the price were $200. With an online product, the marginal cost of additional access is precisely zero, assuming sufficient bandwidth to handle the additional online customers.
Some years ago, Red Street Consulting did a mammoth survey of law firm web sites and published its results in book format, which it sought to sell via Amazon for $2,500 per copy. (IANMTU.) I suspect it sold about two. Red Street also did not have a clue, and it did not survive. Had it sold its book for $75 per copy (a hefty price in the book publishing biz) it probably would be in business today. Why it did not sell its results via internet access for $49 per year will always remain a mystery.
The company which intuited these realities early and remained consistent is the publisher of Quicken.
5:51:57 PM 
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