Right. Not to belabor the point, but Stata is probably correct to assume
that massive redistribution of PDF files would take place. Also, the manuals
are of such high quality, and contain so much instruction of how to use the
statistical tools, that to me they're more like a series of statistics
texts. And no one would suggest that a textbook writer also distribute the
book in PDF form. So I think we'll have to live with the paper manuals for
the time being.
David Epstein
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of Richard
Sperling
Sent: Sunday, December 22, 2002 12:16 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: st: PDF Stata 8 manuals
On Sun, 22 Dec 2002, Marcello Pagano wrote:
> I too would love to see the manuals in PDF form, since I also often
> use my laptop. I suspect that the reason for the unavailability of
> the manuals in this form is that it would cut significantly into the
> sales of the (paper) manuals? Thus, even though we are probably back
> to talking about pricing (!) I would like to hear from Stata Corp on
> this.
>
> m.p.
>
Right. Charging separately for the manuals allows Stata to price
discriminate. Those users who really must have all of the manuals will pay
the full price, and those of us who feel we can get by without purchasing
the full set of manuals pay a lower amount. But it seems to me that the
marginal cost of producing the pdf manuals should be small. So why not
simply produce them and distribute them along with the paper manuals? One
possible answer is that, as Marcello suggests, Stata Corp. loses revenue.
Consider an unethical user who purchases Stata with the minimal set of
manuals and then begs, borrows, or steals the other pdf manauls later.
It's easy to copy pdf files; it's expensive in terms of time and money to
copy a stack of paper manuals.
Richard
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