PDFs - Does size matter?

Hello all,

I wanted to open a discussion on PDFs. In general, I have been a real supporter of PDF products. I bought the Book of Eldritch Might and Maidenheim very early on in the D20 PDF days. While I have occasionally hit a stinker, for the most part, I have been really happy with PDFs, and continue to support the sub-industry. i am really looking forwards to Rocketship Empires by Storyart, for example. And the only reason I am holding off on Legends of the Samurai is that I really want that puppy in hardback like Legends of Excalibur.

That said, I find the current trend interesting. It seems that nowadays, publishers are producing lots of smaller page count PDFs for around a couple of bucks. The large high page count PDFs seem to be getting fewer and fewer. There must be some merit to this approach, and it must be finacially viable for the designers and publishers. I think that is great, because anything that keeps people like Phil Reed and Adamant going is great.

But I gotta admit that I am far less satisfied with the little PDFs than the big ones, even when they are well designed. The little ones just seem to barely whet my appetite, whereas the bigger ones leave me satisfied for a very long time.

How do you feel about PDFs? Do you purchase them? Do you like them? How big or little?

Just curious what the general rpger thinks. Any publishers chime ins are welcome as well.

Razuur

I get a ton. I prefer longer but still cheap ones. I don't get drm ones. I prefer pdf to print now for utility (search, copy and paste) and storage reasons. I'm now checking out dtrpg.com to get a bunch of the bigger ones I want, even ones I have in print so that I can do the copy and paste functions.

Personally, I like them bigger. But the market seems to like them smaller...

I prefer the little ones. I despise reading long books on the screen, so I want to either be able to print it off (small size helps) or read it in one short sitting.

I like PDFs, regardless of the size.

I think a possible explaination for the 'downsizing' of PDFs is an awareness by publishers that the consumer would like to be able to print out the entire PDF. Page count becomes a potential issue as people would likely complain if one PDF killed off a inkjet cartridge.

People buy PDFs for two main reasons - utility and cost. A PDF printed out needs a binder or some other method of binding...that combined with the cost of paper and ink. If the PDF is too large, the 'cost savings' of a PDF gets undermined.

As long as the shorter ones are collected both sides of the argument can be happy. I'm a strong believer in collecting PDFs together.

I must admit that it's the big ones that become staples in my game, but see certain advantages to smaller ones. Sometimes I only use a nugget of an idea from a larger book; it's nice to only take what you need.

But then, sometimes you don't know what you want until you read it, and you might miss some ideas that you would not have picked up individually.

philreed said:

As long as the shorter ones are collected both sides of the argument can be happy. I'm a strong believer in collecting PDFs together.

Click to expand...

And this is something (among many things, it seems) that we see eye-to-eye on. Compiled collections of smaller themed PDFs are a win-win situation.

I know that we have begun creating smaller pdf's because they seem to sell as well as, or better than, the larger ones. People seem to like have something small and concise for reading and printing.

Smaller pdfs take much less time to edit, layout, and in general, produce. This means that a company can give you 5-10 small pdfs, on various subjects, in the time that it takes to create one large pdf on a single subject. This also means that if we spend the time make a single large pdf on a single subject we are only targeting one group and if that group turns out to be smaller than expected, we lose. With the small pdfs, we can hit a larger audience on average. We still strive to maintain the same or better quality in the small pdfs since you will be expecting more.

Forgive me if I seem to be rambling, I do that sometimes.

An important note on short PDFs:

With a short PDF I can afford to throw a few hours into experimental works. About a month ago I released Six Living Planar Gates that took about six hours to produce -- counting writing, rewriting, discussion with others, layout, and converting to PDF. Since release the PDF has sold 27 copies at $1/each. Obviously a failure.

Now imagine if I had spent 40 hours on a much larger PDF of living planar gates*. Yes the retail price would have been higher but sales likely would have been roughly the same. I went into Six Living Planar Gates expecting it to fail but if it had proven popular it would have opened the door to more similar products.

So, to keep this short, the short PDFs are my playground. They're a place for me to throw ideas around and experiment. I also experiment in the DM's Idea Pipeline but not as often and definitely not with the really wacky ideas.



* Though I have been working on 101 Planar Gates as a fun project. I sometimes choose to work on a project -- no matter the size -- knowing it will fail. I have to write stuff that excites me, you know.