Alzrius
The EN World kitten
A little while ago there was a reposting of a Dear Wizards of the Coast blog post which said, in the form of a truly huge wall o' text, that WotC should take up a print-on-demand publishing model for their previous edition materials.
Now, we've all heard people making the case for WotC to do this. Hell, I did it myself in my own love letter to WotC thread. Since then, though, I've been thinking about some of the few things we know for certain about how WotC operates, about how print-on-demand (and PDF) publishing work, and I've come to a conclusion.
Print-on-demand would be good for the community, and WotC in the long run. But it'd be bad for WotC in the short run, and that's why they'll never do it.
Let's look at what we know. Rick Marshall, who worked at WotC for some time (including when the transition to Hasbro happened) mentions that Third Edition D&D was originally structured as a loss leader to initially grow the community.
Now, let's look at what (admittedly little) we can surmise about print-on-demand publishing. The conventional knowledge is that it's a modest start-up cost, and then you sit back and let the money trickle in until you've turned a profit under the long tail. So what's the problem?
Well, the problem is that this "modest start-up" cost is not inconsiderable. As others have pointed out, print-on-demand products still require the printing materials (e.g. printing plates), but there's a very real possibility that WotC doesn't have said materials for some (quite possibly a lot) of the older materials. In that case, having access to printed copies or old PDFs doesn't matter - new printing plates have to be made, and that takes time and money, especially if there is a lot of material that has to be set up again in this manner.
There's also a question of the older artwork, in terms of who legally still owns it. This may not be a problem, especially since WotC was selling PDF copies of their old materials without any lawsuits being filed (that we know of). Still, it's something that they'd have to at least look into; time and money, again.
We won't even get into the issues with non-standard printed materials, like poster maps.
Further, it's not enough to just make those materials available and not say anything - this service then needs to be advertized, and that's a continuous cost. You have to get the word out, particularly to older and lapsed players who may not check the WotC website or EN World much, if at all. You've got to make at least a modest effort to make sure people know that these old books are available, and that's an investment.
Incidentally, even PDF publishing is not immune to some of these not-so-minor costs. Yes, WotC sold PDFs before, but I recall some complaints about the nature of those scans...because that's what they were, scans. They often weren't optimized for PDF format, lacked bookmarks and hyperlinks, and weren't given Optical Character Recognition. All of those things take time and effort, which is money.
Let's take a sharp turn here to what Ryan Dancey has told us about how Hasbro has structured WotC and set their annual sales targets.
So this gives us a peek into the corporate mindset among the D&D team at WotC - that they're perpetually behind the eight ball. They need to make at least $50 million annually - not counting any licensing revenue from the computer/video games - or face the very real possibility that all of D&D will be shut down and they'll all be looking for new jobs (or, I suppose, transferred elsewhere).
This mad drive to increase revenue is, incidentally, the reason we see the annual layoffs at WotC. As Jeff Grubb once blogged about, there's a reason this happens (almost) every Christmas.
So what does all of this have to do with loss leaders and long tails? In short, everything.
It's likely self-evident by this point, but if you look at the idea of "setting up a loss leader that will cost us a fair amount of money this year, and over the next several years, that will eventually have a chance of growing the community and thus increasing our revenue," and compare that to having to work under extremely difficult annual projections that force you to maximize profits each year, you can start to see why those two positions aren't compatible.
Imagine being the guy who makes this pitch at the next meeting among WotC staff. Imagine telling people that you think they should enact a plan that will absolutely cost them money - and thus, jobs - over the next five years or so before, you hope, it begins to turn a profit. How much support is that idea likely to get from your colleagues? Even if you're willing to lose your job over the ensuing budget cuts to pay for this idea, how many of your co-workers are going to feel the same? For that matter, does your idea even have more of a chance of bringing in revenue than other short-term ideas that can be implemented right now without (as big of) a loss?
This is why, ultimately, I think that WotC will likely never embrace a print-on-demand model for their older books. I suspect it also had something to do with the demise of their pay-for-download PDFs, and how we haven't seen anything in that front in several years now (though there are likely other factors at work where the PDFs are concerned). Ultimately, the immediate money issues are an insurmountable barrier, at least under the current conditions that the D&D Team has to operate under.
I'd love to see older D&D materials that you could print-on-demand. I think it'd be good for the hobby, and good for WotC, over the long term. But the short term costs are too much for them to bear.
Now, we've all heard people making the case for WotC to do this. Hell, I did it myself in my own love letter to WotC thread. Since then, though, I've been thinking about some of the few things we know for certain about how WotC operates, about how print-on-demand (and PDF) publishing work, and I've come to a conclusion.
Print-on-demand would be good for the community, and WotC in the long run. But it'd be bad for WotC in the short run, and that's why they'll never do it.
Let's look at what we know. Rick Marshall, who worked at WotC for some time (including when the transition to Hasbro happened) mentions that Third Edition D&D was originally structured as a loss leader to initially grow the community.
Rick Marshall said:
Now, let's look at what (admittedly little) we can surmise about print-on-demand publishing. The conventional knowledge is that it's a modest start-up cost, and then you sit back and let the money trickle in until you've turned a profit under the long tail. So what's the problem?
Well, the problem is that this "modest start-up" cost is not inconsiderable. As others have pointed out, print-on-demand products still require the printing materials (e.g. printing plates), but there's a very real possibility that WotC doesn't have said materials for some (quite possibly a lot) of the older materials. In that case, having access to printed copies or old PDFs doesn't matter - new printing plates have to be made, and that takes time and money, especially if there is a lot of material that has to be set up again in this manner.
There's also a question of the older artwork, in terms of who legally still owns it. This may not be a problem, especially since WotC was selling PDF copies of their old materials without any lawsuits being filed (that we know of). Still, it's something that they'd have to at least look into; time and money, again.
We won't even get into the issues with non-standard printed materials, like poster maps.
Further, it's not enough to just make those materials available and not say anything - this service then needs to be advertized, and that's a continuous cost. You have to get the word out, particularly to older and lapsed players who may not check the WotC website or EN World much, if at all. You've got to make at least a modest effort to make sure people know that these old books are available, and that's an investment.
Incidentally, even PDF publishing is not immune to some of these not-so-minor costs. Yes, WotC sold PDFs before, but I recall some complaints about the nature of those scans...because that's what they were, scans. They often weren't optimized for PDF format, lacked bookmarks and hyperlinks, and weren't given Optical Character Recognition. All of those things take time and effort, which is money.
Let's take a sharp turn here to what Ryan Dancey has told us about how Hasbro has structured WotC and set their annual sales targets.
Ryan Dancey said:
So this gives us a peek into the corporate mindset among the D&D team at WotC - that they're perpetually behind the eight ball. They need to make at least $50 million annually - not counting any licensing revenue from the computer/video games - or face the very real possibility that all of D&D will be shut down and they'll all be looking for new jobs (or, I suppose, transferred elsewhere).
This mad drive to increase revenue is, incidentally, the reason we see the annual layoffs at WotC. As Jeff Grubb once blogged about, there's a reason this happens (almost) every Christmas.
Jeff Grubb said:
So what does all of this have to do with loss leaders and long tails? In short, everything.
It's likely self-evident by this point, but if you look at the idea of "setting up a loss leader that will cost us a fair amount of money this year, and over the next several years, that will eventually have a chance of growing the community and thus increasing our revenue," and compare that to having to work under extremely difficult annual projections that force you to maximize profits each year, you can start to see why those two positions aren't compatible.
Imagine being the guy who makes this pitch at the next meeting among WotC staff. Imagine telling people that you think they should enact a plan that will absolutely cost them money - and thus, jobs - over the next five years or so before, you hope, it begins to turn a profit. How much support is that idea likely to get from your colleagues? Even if you're willing to lose your job over the ensuing budget cuts to pay for this idea, how many of your co-workers are going to feel the same? For that matter, does your idea even have more of a chance of bringing in revenue than other short-term ideas that can be implemented right now without (as big of) a loss?
This is why, ultimately, I think that WotC will likely never embrace a print-on-demand model for their older books. I suspect it also had something to do with the demise of their pay-for-download PDFs, and how we haven't seen anything in that front in several years now (though there are likely other factors at work where the PDFs are concerned). Ultimately, the immediate money issues are an insurmountable barrier, at least under the current conditions that the D&D Team has to operate under.
I'd love to see older D&D materials that you could print-on-demand. I think it'd be good for the hobby, and good for WotC, over the long term. But the short term costs are too much for them to bear.
