(responce to Ogre Cave interview) NO Monte don't stop PDFs!

(for people who don't know MC said he was planning on making at least one product a print only product because he felt there would be lack of interest in downloading a large PDF.)
<www.ogrecave.com/interviews/montecook.shtml>

For what its worth I think that PDF*s are an important and valuble means for distributing products and that the system used up until this point with PDF & print products both being released is the ideal way to do business. Its a shame that one of the people who really started getting the PDF revolution up and running is considering shifting even some of their products to print-only.

I'M NOT AGAINST PRINT PRODUCTS. Its basically a fact that the print market is bigger than the electronic market. Anybody who plays D&D has several print products (the core books) while I'm sure a much smaller segement has even gotten online to download something free or look at someone's homebrew game. Its rational and understandable to release print products. But also releasing PDFs is a really good thing and I hope that over time people will become more comfortable with the format and release more good products for PDF.

As a consumer personally I find print products inconvenient, expensive and unnessesary. I bought all of my Malhavoc press products on-line and in PDF form.
While I don't claim to be a typical consumer I would probably not have bought print copies of these products, even if I could have found them near me.
Print products take up space (something I have precious little of) room and cost a lot more. It also takes much longer for the product to come out and its impossible to errata the document later (as opposed to the PDFs where MC requently provides editing programs which will correct the PDF itself). It's pretty irritating that my PH is littered with incorrect information, but I don't regret picking up The Book of Eldritch Might the first day it came out. There was a program which corrected the typos and one rule mistake by the end of the week.
I would also suggest that this increases the likelyhood that anything which might have slipped through the editing process gets caught before it winds up in immutable print.

On a (dare I say it) moral, or at least a non-wasteful, level electronic publishing is really the way to go. Its nice to choose your level of impact on your environment.
Long term we'll almost certainly see developement of things like electronic paper more quickly if there continue to be quality product availible.
[This isn't the newest article but this sort of technological developement will be speeded by the existence of quality product
<http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns9999837>]

I don't have a particularly fast modem (ISDN so it takes the better part of an hour to get even smaller documents). That's fine with me. Its still a hell of a lot easier than actually having to go out and buy the book. I can turn my computer on and then cook dinner and read a book (or work on the computer while its downloading) just as easily as anything else.

I -could- see some reasons to discontinue or discourage the developement of PDF products. I'm not saying this is MCs modivation, but I want to know.

Piracy
I wouldn't expect this to be a problem but it is possible that somebody bought some of MCs products and put them up on their site for free. This would irriate me (especially if I was working to make sure that good products were availible to people at reasonable prices instead of charging an arm and a leg)

Falling sales
I was under the impression that the first Malhavoc PDF products sold significantly better than MC was expecting. If sales have been falling for recent products (Banewarrens was the most recent product though its hard to compare this sort of adventure to the earlier Books of E.M.) that might cause a producer to switch to print-only.

(edit: I had some unfair comments about profit motive here. They weren't fair so I dropped them.)

MCs looking for comments: do people think he should stop doing PDFs and stick to just print?


*For the record I don't actually care much about the PDF format. I like having products availible to me to download conveniently which come in a format that strikes an acceptable balance between a creators rights (documents can't be edited, the reader for the format is free, its largely free of bugs and viruses, etc) and a consumers rights (I can make a backup on a mirrored drive so if my system goes down I don't lose everything, etc). PDF seems to stike an acceptable balance. I could probably have put electronic formated materials or something but PDF is shorter.

I sincerely hope he won't stop doing PDFs. I don't care much either if the file to download is large or not since I've got a broadband connection, but it might proves to be an issue... If he believes not many potential customers have broadband and thus easy access to large files, he is probably better off only doing a print product, but I hope he'll be able to make it a pdf product also.

Graf said:

Piracy
I wouldn't expect this to be a problem but it is possible that somebody bought some of MCs products and put them up on their site for free. This would irriate me (especially if I was working to make sure that good products were availible to people at reasonable prices instead of charging an arm and a leg)

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Someone putting stuff on their site isn't the problem with piracy, IMO. The problem is: KaZaA, Grockster, Freenet, Gnutella .. etc. Piracy is just made too damn easy these days. Even printing only isn't a fool-proof. Anyone can verify from KaZaA that about all WotC publications are available as scanned PDFs.

The problem is one of convenience. Paper is one of the most convent items ever created, it allowed us to carry reading material with us no matter where we went.

While PDFs are a wonderful way to publish documents reading them is not very convent. You have to have a reader or print them out. PCs are still too bulky and not yet as convent as we think, so what do we do? We print them out! What happens then? We bitch about the cost of ink, the quality of art, the lack of color. Things we took for granted when items are published in hardback. Who do we bitch at?

I do think there is hope, tech is coming that will make use of PDFs as convent as paper. We just have to push forward.

Personally, I prefer PDFs in some cases. Especially for things like advice books like NPC essentials that you never use at the table, or adventures that you most likely only use once. Also, supplements are nice that are arranged to be printed out piece-meal like LE2. Sean Reynolds upcoming NPC book sounds like it would fit this category as well... chances are that the GM would pick out which NPC to use in the game ahead of time and just print that one out.

If it is something the players are going to need to look at or use, a pass around copy is best, and usually print is preferable in that venue. I just ordered a dead tree edition of Wild Spellcraft for this reason.

I like PDF's for one reason: only print what you need. I don't have to haul a whole book to the session for one class ability of my main bad guy.

The two main culprits here are spells and npc's.

Even if I have a print version of my spells, I want an electronic version, so that I can put all my characters spells on a few sheets of paper. This is vastly, vastly more convenient.

I bought a couple pdf's from Monte, but the problem is, I never felt like I was actually getting anything. I read through them, took the rules that I wanted, and now they just live on my hard drive. I really have no interest in printing them out and carrying around a bunch of loose leaf papers.

Of course, if there is even a small amount of interest, and guessing from this thread, there is, then I don't see why Monte would stop releasing pdf's, since it takes so little extra work to make them available.

Zerovoid said:

I bought a couple pdf's from Monte, but the problem is, I never felt like I was actually getting anything. I read through them, took the rules that I wanted, and now they just live on my hard drive.

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If you had shelves as stuffed as mine, you would realize that's not a bad thing.

If you've ever had an expensive or hard to find print product ruined by an unfortunate coke spill, you might also see some possible benefits.

I really have no interest in printing them out and carrying around a bunch of loose leaf papers.

Click to expand...

Loose leaf? When I print things out, I stuff them into a paper binder avaiable from most stores for cheap (as in: can get many for a dollar... especially right now with the back-to-school sales going on.)

PDF's are cool.

Honestly, if WOTC had official PDF's for their products I wouldn't mind dropping say $5 (for a book over 200 pages) on it if I already owned the full product. I like to have the files on my laptop for easy reference during a session. Also, it's handy to be able to do a search for something (like a spell, ruling, etc.) without having to flip thru the book. I still need the printed and bound version for my bookshelf and eyes (staring at the screen for a while just reading hurts) but a PDF would be nice.

And as mentioned above the PDF's can be modified so errata can be squelched as soon as it's found. If companies included it on a CD that came with the book, that would be cool, too. I know it's a pirate's heaven but most folks like to have a the book itself, as well.

And as mentioned before, the ability to print out certain pages for easy reference is good, too. I have the equipment section copied so I don't have the book creased open to those pages, very handy. Increases the life of the book's binding! (Hey, I work in a library. I think about these things. )

OUTCRY

From the interview:

Interviewer:
You recently mentioned on your forums that there would be a print only product coming out next year. Why did you decide to go that route?

Monte:
Basically, it's just logistics. It's going to be a really big, hardcover book. I don't think that most of our regular pdf customers are going to want to download something that size, let alone print it if they wanted a hardcopy.

Monte:
It's also a bit of a test to see what people want and like. If there's a big outcry because it's not pdf, we'll roll with those punches and present it as a download as well (perhaps in chunks rather than as one big thing).


So Monte, please put it out as pdf as well. I have only bought your Malhavok stuff in pdf and that is how I prefer all of my gaming materials given the option. Breaking up a big file into littler ones for easier downloading is a good idea, whether they are sold separately or together (such as the maidenheim and darwin's world buying options).

I use pdfs for ease of storage, price, and cut and pasting (such as creating my character's spell book with the descriptions of all his spells.)