Graf
Explorer
(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.
<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.