Invasion of the 5-10 page PDFs . . .

I've noticed a vast increase in the number of 5-10 page PDFs lately. Would anyone be willing to let us know what drew them to publish short PDFs?

Possibly your success, Phil, is encouraging others?

I think it's a netural fit for the PDF world. A small idea that isn't worth the filler it would take to put out in print can be very popular in PDF. I also am attracted to small PDFs because I think they are a good value. I'm may use anywhere from a small fraction to a majority of a print product, but a small PDF can be so narrowly focused that I know I'll be able to get my money's worth out of it. If it covers a niche I'm interested in, it would be difficult for it to fail.

DaveStebbins said:

Possibly your success, Phil, is encouraging others?

I think it's a netural fit for the PDF world. A small idea that isn't worth the filler it would take to put out in print can be very popular in PDF. I also am attracted to small PDFs because I think they are a good value. I'm may use anywhere from a small fraction to a majority of a print product, but a small PDF can be so narrowly focused that I know I'll be able to get my money's worth out of it. If it covers a niche I'm interested in, it would be difficult for it to fail.

Click to expand...

Thanks!

You've pretty much nailed my reason for creating short PDFs. Add to that the fact that I don't have to have a product in development for weeks (especially important now that I've quit my job to do this full time) and the short PDFs suit me very well. That's not to say I won't release longer PDFs (I just posted the 40-page vs. Monsters Deluxe Edition and should finish the 48-page Motocaust this week) but I will continue to release short PDFs.

I'm just curious to hear the reasons of others. Especially since I'm seeing a lot of them lately and some from publishers who complained about me releasing short PDFs.

Having started to release a few short PDFs I was a little surprised at the cost.

At RPGObjects we always considered the 50 page mark the minimum at which we would price a product $5.

So when I released the prison/adventure supplement Inside Vossburg Supermax, which was 25 pages long, we split the difference and priced it 2.50.

Just recently I wrote a short little Blood and Guts book with some new classes and feats that was about 8 pages. We had never done a book that short so we started looking around at the short PDFs for an idea on price and found many 8-10 page PDFs priced at around 2 bucks.

This raised some eyebrows, from me at least. I had released a 30 page PDF for free, and a 25 page PDF for 2.50, and the idea that people would pay 2 dollars for 8 pages was... surprising.

Chuck

I will not be doing short PDF releases in the same vein as you since it does not fit my objectives. However, I think if you were going for the short $$ to generate cash flow for a business then you would have to be foolish not to see the grass is greener on the short PDF side of the fence. A mix of short fillers and long IP pieces seems to me to be the ideal practice for long-term success. Conrgats, I believe that makes you a pioneer

Now to contradict myself, I have thought about what you & others were doing and decided to release a few free small PDFs to generate name and style recognition for my product line [It also gave me a break from rather boring module writing.]. I think they will mainly be magazine style articles like the one released yesterday. These also allow me to polish my layout, design, & PDFing skills. I hope that it works as well for my purposes as it does for yours.

BTW, It amazes me how much you and a few other folks can put out in a short period.

I'll echo Dave and say I think other companies are emulating your success, Phil.

Now it works even better since there's a growing array of them available and that makes it easier for a customer to put together a $5 plus package.

I like the way they sort of work like a series of magazine articles that one can mix and match as they desire. Anyway, congrats on pioneering a way of making the electronic format more appealing to customers.

pdf under $2

Thanks to the presence of these and their aparant success I am seriously considering breaking up my small-to-medium sized first release into a few versions. I would like some advice, if people are willing to give it.

I have a not-hypothetical release planned for about $4. It is seven character classes long, four of which are quite hefty in new ideas and rules, and 3 are tweaking on existing ones. I was originally planning to release the whole thing as one peice, but now I am considering the following models:

Release 4 main classes as (say) $1, and the collected 7 as a $4 release at the same time.
Release 4 main classes as $1, 3 minor as 75c and then a month or two later the collection as a $4 pdf.
Release just the one thing at $4.

The economics of the situation seem perplexingly in favour of small releases, considering how much good stuff there is for $5 or more that is over 100 pages. But, as others have said, there seems to be a perception that if a product is under $3 it is automatically a bargain....

If you were in my position, what would you do? Assume that you can find the spare time to cut down the larger release into smaller ones... I am not sure I actually do, but whatever...

I'm going to be doing short pdfs soon, it's an idea I've had for quite some time. I was surprised to see Phil doing it, but glad to have a test case and proof of concept before I splashed in. I think they take advantage of the medium well and can target concepts that wouldn't be appropriate in a large book. Compilation books, like Occult Lore for instance, are fine, but usually there are only 2-3 concepts a person wants to use out of their $30 book. With short pdfs, the customer can pick and choose, which I think is a benefit in the long run.

Me again!

Forgive my ignorance, but what is the general subject matter of the shorter PDFs?

Is it mostly monsters or spell lists, or something a little more meaty?

Just curious.