Charging for softcopy

[geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA]

 Tammy Sudol wondered what to charge for copies of docs on
 diskette instead of in printed form. Tammy, you noted that
 your product costs millions of dollars, so isn't it kind of
 a niggly point to charge for a $1 diskette or a $2 CD-ROM?
 This strikes me as unwise and petty, particularly since
 you've already built cost recovery for the printed
 documentation into the cost of the software. I'd lean very
 strongly towards providing the diskette docs for free.

 However, there's likely a profit opportunity here if you
 want to take it. There are only two real reasons to have
 the docs on diskette: so you can print your own copies, or
 so you can access the docs online (to replace or complement
 the online help, if any). This suggests an opportunity for
 some audience and market analysis... is there money to be
 made (perhaps hire another writer!) or customer
 satisfaction to be earned by meeting one or both of these
 needs?

 You mentioned that a concern about providing the documents
 on diskette is effectively a transfer of copyright to the
 client. Not so. Just as your software has a "you can't
 resell this and can't modify it" license, you can protect
 your diskette version of the documentation with its own
 license agreement. However, add a very clear "if you tamper
 with the docs, you negate our careful quality control
 process, designed to ensure your safety, and this absolves
 us of all responsibility for any damages that result". Your
 lawyer will give you details of appropriate wording.

 Finally, why not ship the docs in Acrobat format? You can
 protect the docs from being modified in that way, so the
 client will really have to hack ("crack", if you prefer)
 the files to modify them. The fact that they have to break
 the password protection to do so means that you've got even
 stronger legal grounds to go after them for copyright
 violation, if that's really an issue. (If the information
 is proprietary, I'm not sure how copying a file is any more
 difficult than photocopying the printed manual, so that's a
 non-issue.) I've seen demos of the new Acrobat, and it's
 pretty sharp... the search and annotation facilities are
 lovely, and it's Web-ready. It sounds like an ideal
 solution for your clients' situation.

 --Geoff Hart     @8^{)}     geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
 Disclaimer: Speaking for myself, not FERIC.

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