See I'm the opposite, I find that PDF's are cumbersome to use. Flicking from window to window, for me, is more unwieldly than having the book next to me open where I need it so all I need do is turn my head. But then, I tend to do my planning as a hand written draft and sprawl my stuff about the dining table (much to the chagrin of the missus ) then type it out from the notes.

It would appear I have created a far more heated discussion than I would like What I was should have just said in the first instance was

I Like Books!!!!

Rather, I can understand that digital media, especially in this day and age, is growing in popularity but a lot of companies are loathe to dive straight into it as it takes them away from their core business (their comfort zone if you will) and it can have an adverse affect on their profitability (I work for one of the largest publishing companies in the UK so have kind of a vested interest in DM failing )

I think this is going to be one of those debates that will go on till there are no more trees to make paper, some people prefer to use the books other PDF's and their ilk.

Lupinorc said:

Lawyer says noooo

I'll just run through this one more time for those who didn't catch it before:

• Murder is a crime
• **** is a crime
• Murder isn't ****
• Murder and **** are both illegal

• Copyright Infringement is a crime
• Theft is a crime
• Copyright Infringement isn't Theft
• Copyright Infringement and Theft are both illegal.

Right, now that's covered, on to PDFs:

I love PDFs, they're wonderful tools to have at your disposal (especially when you factor in the ability to do things like comment in house rules and errata straight into the text or quickly make custom summary sheets). FFG apparently liked PDFs because quite an extensive catalogue of their past products is available for purchase on DriveThru

People seem to take the view that releasing PDFs will instantly obliterate all print copies of the product, which is patently ridiculous (so much so that I'm ridiculing it - right here - ergo it must be ridiculous). Companies can release both a PDF and a print version of a product, thereby appealing to both those who prefer electronic media and those who prefer traditional hardcopies, surely that's preferable to isolating a portion of your fanbase with a giant gate saying "You must purchase your product in this format to continue"?

Piracy concerns should be a complete non-issue. 100% of the available Dark Heresy range has been pirated, as has 100% of GW's 40K wargame output since the release of 3rd edition, what are they afraid will happen, an increase in piracy? . By producing a PDF you:

- Allow people to start playing Dark Heresy for a much lower initial cost, thereby increasing your customer base and making your product more popular (Boo! Hiss!)
- Monetizing sources you otherwise would not see revenue from - like Kage, for example (What? get more money? BOO!)
- Reduce piracy by not forcing customers to turn to illegal sources to get your product in the format they desire (What? Less piracy? Nay!)
- Reduce piracy again by providing OEF versions of your products which are inevitably preferable to someone's scanned version of their print book.
- Get your products out into the hands of paying customers earlier by not being constrained by shipping and postage details - If FFG were to release a PDF of Disciples, we could have it (and be paying for it with sweet, sweet cashish) right now .

It's the MP3 situation all over again - "You can't enjoy your purchased music in software form, you MUST play it from the CD! wait...you mean we can sell you the electronic format and make a ton of money off you and sell CDs too? and the electronic format has zero shipping, storage or duplication cost? and we can release content almost as soon as it's made because these days almost everything passes through an electronic format before being printed/pressed/produced anyway?...Hmm...."

When you have a product as popular as Dark Heresy, and produce for a setting as popular as Warhammer 40,000, your products will be pirated, and there's literally nothing you can do to stop it, because in the end someone with a book and a scanner will undo any hard work you put into electronic locks and gizmos, and the harder you try, the more you stimulate piracy (The Streisand effect, or as it should be renamed in relation to DRM, the Spore effect).

I was under the impression (after contacting FFG a while ago) that the reason they won't release PDFs of the Dark Heresy line was due to GW, but given that their more recent products aren't available in PDF either, I'm starting to question that.

Anyhoo, to refer back to my opening statement, Copyright Infringement is bad and wrong and illegal, and you definitely should not do it, but at least it isn't theft, and people should always remember that 1 download does not = 1 lost sale - that would be silly.

Charax said:

In my defence I would like to bring to your attention exhibit A "The anti piracy add that gets rammed down your eye sockets everytime you watch a DVD or go to the cinema". No, not the "fat blacksmith type character that looks a bit possessed ad" (though it is equally annoying), the "You wouldn't steal a [thingy] with the dodgy music ad". Once you seen that a couple of hundred times it's hard to think otherwise

Lupinorc said:

Not exactly, but you're close. You're paying for printing and distribution cuts, as well. Seriously. Not kidding. In fact, PDFs are generally more profitable than paper books. So that's more money for sweat of the brow. One thing I can say with confidence is that most creators are sorely underpaid for their efforts when comparing hours worked to money made. Which is, by the way, another reason I don't steal PDFs.

And for the record, I call it stealing because taking something that isn't yours for free without permission is stealing, regardless of how the law defines it.

Sad to say, while i was waiting to get my freshly ordered Inquisitor Handbook one of my players offered it to me on CD ...

I refused first, of course, but after 2 weeks of waiting (and still no paid book in sight) i accepted it. Now i have it both in hardcover and as a pdf. The hardcover allways accompanies me to the toilet where i browse through it. stupid as it sounds, nowhere are body and mind closer together when your laying and egg, you wouldn't believe the amount of ideas i come up that way. and to make it sure: no, they are NOT CRAP. ok? (of course one of you is still going to make a joke about it).

The pdf i use whenever one of my players contacts me per ICQ and has a question. Is faster for finding things, and i don't have to go away to get the book.

Waiting two weeks for your IH? heh... I ordered mine from Amazon in July and am still waiting for it. In fact, I just called them to find out when it was going to ship and they STILL don't have a date. I think it's time to go to another source.

Wu Ming said:

This is what happens when you use the standard FCKeditor interface, rather than hacking out the HTML. Typical.

Kage

Charax said:

This right here is 100% my view of things. When disciples comes out I expectit's on rapidshare by the end of that week.

The whole issue of selling PDFs has to be seen from the seller's point of view.

Say it costs a ballpark figure of $10,000 to Produce a Title (art, copy, layout, proofs, overheads, etc). This is cheap.

You have a finite market, say 10,000 people. Probably small.

SELLING VIA PRINT

Say each copy cost $10 (?) to print and distribute.

You will need to sell each copy for $10 + $1 = $11 to recoup costs.

SELLING VIA PDF

You will need to sell each copy for $1 to recoup costs.

However, say that for a nice color book you could flog it for $50, however, you can only squeeze $10-20 out of the market for a good quality PDF.

Thus the return on books is better than PDFs by at least $20 per unit.

Why not offer both? Well, if your market research tells you that people will on average buy one or the other but not both, and/or that demand is inelastic on this point, then it benefits you to only provide the book option.

I'm not saying that this is the way it is, I'm just offering a suggestion. Like almost everyone else here (?) I'm not privy to GW or FFGs market research and Marketing Plans.

What I'm driving at is that the decision is based firstly on what will recover costs, and secondly on what the market will bear. Any company that has been around as long as GW is aware of that, and if you read their annual reports (which are actually more fun to read than most!) you can see that where this ruthless kind of logic has been obeyed they have been successful, and where they've ignored it and paid the price that year.

That's just my 2c (.02c in PDF)

Unfortunately part of the problem with the PDF debate is rarely will the companies we want PDF’s from tell us the reasons they don’t do it nor will they discuss price points. Thus, we just speculate as to the cost of these things and probably make assumptions that are incorrect. Catalyst Games, the Battletech people, just recently put out a $5 PDF and have stated they are unsure whether or not they’ll do more, even though they were happy with the amount sold so far. But they also do PDF’s of all their books in addition to hard copies. Therefore, if a company that has success with PDF’s is unsure if they’ll continue with more I’m sure it must really be a difficult decision for someone who doesn’t have that much experience.

My original opinion was I think that FFG is missing some sales by not doing PDF's however, now I feel that they may not be comfortable with the potential financial difficulties that come from pdf's and hard copies. But, until FFG says something we'll really never know.

Insequential said:

Sorry if this seems to be taking an example to flog the argument, but this simply doesn't seem to hold up to personal experience. Consider GURPS as the example. GURPS Basic Characters (half of what one might consider the core rules, with Campaigns being the second half) sells for $39.95 for a hardback color book. Their e23 site didn't have the PDF for about a year-or-so, but then they offer it at $29.95. You can get the book at third party vendours for around $26 and, of course, you can just get the PDF for free if you want to steal. The cost of the PDF and the discrepancies between print and PDF costs seems consistent with other vendours, such as DriveThruRPG, where full-fledged games tend to go for the $25-30 range.

Insequential said:

Yet there is a growing segment of the market that will only buy PDF. In the past eight years, I've only bought four physical RPGs: GURPS , becaue it's my system of choice and they didn't offer it in PDF at the time; WFRP 2e , because I wanted to see what all the hype was about and whether it was worth it (it wasn't); and Dark Heresy , which was also not worth the money (for me, anyway). On the other hand, I've purchased around 20-30 PDF in that same period, and deliberately avoided products that are not in PDF.

If it's all about recouping ones production costs, then it seems that putting themselves outside of the market is somewhat strange. As above, why not wait until sales tail off and, once there, offer it for sale via PDF? Second surge of sales might be useful for what might otherwise be stale (or not selling) product. Maybe? I'm not a business person, though, nor versed in the economics of the RPG industry. (Though it would be interesting to have an idea of the total production cost of the product, in terms of staff time, printing costs, etc., to see what kind of joy the comany is getting out of the product! )

As always, though, this is for honest people. Dishonest people can still download the scanned copies without letting GW recoup any of their costs as well.

Just some thoughts.

Kage

I've purchased PDFs and I've sold PDFs. As a generalisation I think it's fair to say that I both buy and sell more cheaper items than expensive ones.

It doesn't matter if there's a growing portion of the market that will only buy PDF until that portion can (somehow by buying a cheaper product?) take up the slack for book sales that /may/ be lost.

Marketing is all a guessing game, and more companies fail from messing up a good thing than from not jumping on the latest bandwagon.

Guessing what's in another company's Marketing Plan is also a guessing game

Insequential said:

That's reasonable. At the same time? Well, back to the GURPS example. There's a $10 difference between PDF and hardback book. I don't know how significant that sounds, but from a punter's perspective it doesn't sound so different... though more tempting. At the same time, I can buy the product cheaper from Amazon for the original hardback book, which is of and in itself $14-15 cheaper than I get from the publisher.

So, if we're trying to deal with strict income/outcome models, where do we sit? We have a cheaper product and... well, we have a cheaper product. You mention sustainability of sales, but does not PDF release you from all but the absolute cost of development while at the same time distancing yourself from limited print runs?

Seems to me that the argument is more about acceptable profit margins than anything else. Does the GURPS example indicate that printing a ~340 page colour hardback only cost $10? Does the fact that Amazon offers products at so much less indicate that the profit margin isn't quite so cut and defined?

Kage