I agree that you should play around with price, but I also believe Zed could be leveraging his free tutorial to market another service later on.
For example, while this isn't an intro to python book, Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails Tutorial I think provides an excellent revenue model for authors.
Basically he provides a free online tutorial that he cross-subsidizes with charging on the premium screencasts and pdf/hardbook editions. I read the tutorial myself in a few days as a beginner and eventually was convinced to buy the screencasts to get a better visual understanding. If it wasn't for the free text I would never have known about Michael's skills and would definitely not have paid for it.
You also have extremely experienced industry leaders providing free screencasts and podcasts educating others for free but in turn increasing their own exposure and overall deal-flow. In the case of coders, you could expect guys like Ryan Bates and Charles Wood to increase their consulting/speaking engagements, where in the case of vc's and angels like Mark Suster and Jason Calacanis I would expect better deal-flow of up and coming startups.
As such, before resorting to price elasticity, I like the general idea of working through cross-subsidization to figure out alternative revenue streams.
For example, while this isn't an intro to python book, Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails Tutorial I think provides an excellent revenue model for authors.
Basically he provides a free online tutorial that he cross-subsidizes with charging on the premium screencasts and pdf/hardbook editions. I read the tutorial myself in a few days as a beginner and eventually was convinced to buy the screencasts to get a better visual understanding. If it wasn't for the free text I would never have known about Michael's skills and would definitely not have paid for it.
You also have extremely experienced industry leaders providing free screencasts and podcasts educating others for free but in turn increasing their own exposure and overall deal-flow. In the case of coders, you could expect guys like Ryan Bates and Charles Wood to increase their consulting/speaking engagements, where in the case of vc's and angels like Mark Suster and Jason Calacanis I would expect better deal-flow of up and coming startups.
As such, before resorting to price elasticity, I like the general idea of working through cross-subsidization to figure out alternative revenue streams.