What do you think is a fair price for PDFs these days?
What is the price? It's saying its adult content and asking me to log in to view it, but I'm on my phone and logging into DTRPG is really hard to do on that.
No more than $4.99 for something that is at least 100 pages long. I could see a couple of dollars more for something that has a ton of very good, professional art.
Since there is no ongoing cost of printing and distribution for an electronic product and you can take advantage of the "long tail," a lot gets down to how much you can make in total sales over time at various price points. $4.99 is still in the "what the hell, I'll give it a shot" range. Much more than that and you are in the "do I buy this or that" range, and sales will be lower. Determining the magic price point for maximum profit in the long run can be tricky. If you make more money at the level you're charging than you would selling more at a lower price point, good for you, but it's definitely not something I would pay for any PDF.
No more than $4.99 for something that is at least 100 pages long.
Ouch! I'm assuming you've not bought any from EN Publishing, then? Most of our ZEITGEIST adventures are in the $8-$9 range for the PDF (more for the softcover, obviously). I don't think we could survive selling 100-page PDFs for under $5.
You're right, I haven't bought any of them.
I have no problem with people paying print prices for PDFs. I'm just not going to do it. When you cut out publisher middlemen, distribution costs, printing costs, bookstore return costs, and the other costs that go into print publishing, then add on the ability for PDFs to take advantage of long-tail sales, I just can't justify paying that much for them, particularly when I can go down to the local Half Price Books and pick up a used gaming book for under $10.
Ultimately, though, there are people who will pay that much for a PDF, so I understand why authors and publishers sometimes charge that much for them. I assume that they have found the optimal price point for their products (price vs. volume of purchases).
I'm late to this thread, but I think you misunderstand the economies of scale. Sure, we have fewer expenses and middle-man costs, but our volume is much lower than a mainstream D&D release. If we were selling 10,000 copies of our adventures, yes, we could price them at $5. But our sales are not quite at that level, so to afford layout, art, editing, and paying writers, charging $10 might not even break even. The RPG market is not very large.
Buying a large publisher's books is like getting something from Bed Bath and Beyond. High quality, usually, but mainstream. A third-party publisher's products are more like a hand-crafted boutique line that might only appeal to a smaller audience, and thus have a higher price point. When you buy from EN Publishing, it's something you can't get elsewhere.