Kurtomatic
First Post
/agreed
If it has to have DRM on it, let it please be through a serious vendor (Amazon!), rather than a train wreck at Digital River.
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Future of WotC PDFs: Unofficial Sneak Preview?
- Thread starter EugeneZ
- Start date
If it has to have DRM on it, let it please be through a serious vendor (Amazon!), rather than a train wreck at Digital River.
AlioTheFool
First Post
I'm ~90% sure I saw that same link about a year and a half ago when I first subscribed to DDi.
Why are there so many who think/hope PDFs can/will be offered for half price or less? Printing is no where near 50% of the cost of the books. This is either serious daydreaming or some huge feelings of entitlement.
Maybe not, but the cost to "make" the next PDF is likely much closer to 0 than the cost of printing another book. It is also efficiently greedy, as you can "make" exactly as many PDFs as you need when you need them with no waste. (Admittedly, I assume the costs of supporting that electronic distribution infrastructure are close to negligible. At some point, though, they become a cost of doing business rather than something associated with a particular product.)
Both of those things reduce the risk that lowering prices to gain more sales ends leads to a net loss (directly, or from previously unsold physical products sitting in warehouses). From my point of view that isn't necessarily entitlement or daydreaming, it's an opportunity for the business and for gamers. Obviously this approach is less helpful for products selling near saturation or that will definitely get multiple printings (e.g. the PHB), but could be great for splat books that people don't need, but will buy for the right price.
It's also another reason why electronic distribution is perfect for catalog titles that currently generate no revenue whatsoever. Each book has an upfront cost, of course, and I can't guess whether or not it makes sense to pay it for very old titles (at least with quality searchable text), but at least everything WotC produced in the last 10 years is easily exportable to PDF or already exists.
Personally, I use a mix of books and PDFs, and they both have their advantages. I was really looking forward to the idea of buying a book and unlocking a PDF for $5-10, as was on the table before 4e's release. Of course, I think one of the big dangers of having separate prices on PDFs and physical copies is that enough people see the product as a single entity with a single worth (more or less) that lowering the PDF cost drives an expectation that the book should cost less as well because "they're really the same thing." In terms of how some people might use them that is probably true, which is why playing up the added-value part of an electronic copy could be important. Otherwise, there could be a vicious circle regarding the price the average consumer is expecting and willing to pay. I think we'll see that risk diminish as electronic readers become ubiquitous, if not quite well-loved.
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JoeGKushner
First Post
It may have to do with the whole distribution cycle.
First off, there is no printing.
Second off, there is no physical storeage.
Third off, there is no labor to move the product.
Fourth off, there is no cost to transport the material.
Fifth off, there is, or does not have to be, a middleman (i.e. distributor)
Sixth off, there is no, or does not have to be, third party, (i.e. Gamestore).
Seventh off, titles can remain 'evergreen' by being PDF thanks to a lack of printing costs.
Entitlement, in my mind, especially since I work in a warehouse and know what goes into the physical part of the picking and shipping of product, doesn't enter my mind at all.
Off the radar from any of those factors, we already have efficient warehouses like Amazon.com, Buy.com and occassionally Wallmart.com and others selling the product to close to 40% off. Entitlement? Hell, it should be more than 50% off.
No cost? Bandwidth isn't free.
This is true. Let's use Amazon's storage service costing for the sake of estimating.
Amazon charges a maximum of 15 cents per gigabyte downloaded. Assume 50 megabytes for a 4e PDF. That's .75 cents per PDF -- not 75 cents, three-quarters of a cent. It'd get cheaper if enough PDFs were downloaded, but we won't worry about that.
The rock bottom price for USPS Media Mail is $2.38. Shipping in bulk is cheaper, but then again shipping costs are incurred at least twice (printer to distributor, distributor to store). So let's go with that for the sake of argument.
So what he should have said is that the cost of transporting PDFs is around 300 times cheaper than the cost of transporting physical books. Me, I think "no cost" is pretty close to accurate, but that's me.
vagabundo
Adventurer
Considering that e-readers are becoming common place WotC should embrace all the formats and have them on Amazon, iTunes, blah blah..
It really makes sense. Oh and put all the current and previous dungeon/dragons on those portals too. I'm sure some non-DDI subscribers would like to snag the occasional issue.
You're leaving money on the table folks...
It really makes sense. Oh and put all the current and previous dungeon/dragons on those portals too. I'm sure some non-DDI subscribers would like to snag the occasional issue.
You're leaving money on the table folks...
Dire Bare
Legend
While all this armchair quarterbacking of PDF pricing makes me giggle, I'm willingly failing my save and jumping in.
There are many factors that go into choosing the "correct" price of an ebook, and quite frankly, I doubt most of us in this thread have much of a clue as to the true complexity of it. Small RPG garage publishers don't have the same costs and same concerns that large publishers do. I compare it to novel ebooks.
Forex, if I wrote a novel and decided to self-publish it in an online format, I could charge anything I want and probably eventually make some sort of profit, as my personal overhead is low and my financial concerns are low also . . . unless I'm crazy and want to quit my dayjob to rely soly upon my self-published brilliant work.
So, why are novel ebooks cheaper than paperback books, but only by a slight margin? Both WotC's novels and other companies novels? Because publishing companies are greedy bastards? I actually have no doubt that publishers are more than a bit greedy to hold on to their stranglehold on the publishing market and squeeze as much profit out of it as possible . . . . but large publishers have higher overhead (even for electronic only products) and have larger concerns (ebooks competing with paper books).
Back to WotC and D&D RPG PDFs (too . . . many . . . acronyms . . .), WotC has to look at their overall costs for a specific book, both in print and electronic forms, and also how the pricing of an individual product will affect and support the rest of the line. They have to worry about too aggressive ebook pricing cannibalizing print sales (which are still important and the core of their business). They also have to get over the "why bother" hump, making sure that the pricing of their ebook releases covers all expenses, makes a reasonable profit, and doesn't hurt print sales or DDI subscriptions in some way.
Should D&D ebooks be cheaper than the print versions? I think so and I hope they are . . . from a personal perspective I hope they are super cheap so I can easily purchase them all! But how cheap is "right"? I'm not going to second guess WotC's pricing decisions . . . I just won't purchase as many of their offerings if they are too expensive for me personally.
And of course, since WotC has made no announcements as to when, if, how, and how much they'll be offering RPG ebooks for . . . . I'll save my worries when we actually have some facts to discuss.
There are many factors that go into choosing the "correct" price of an ebook, and quite frankly, I doubt most of us in this thread have much of a clue as to the true complexity of it. Small RPG garage publishers don't have the same costs and same concerns that large publishers do. I compare it to novel ebooks.
Forex, if I wrote a novel and decided to self-publish it in an online format, I could charge anything I want and probably eventually make some sort of profit, as my personal overhead is low and my financial concerns are low also . . . unless I'm crazy and want to quit my dayjob to rely soly upon my self-published brilliant work.
So, why are novel ebooks cheaper than paperback books, but only by a slight margin? Both WotC's novels and other companies novels? Because publishing companies are greedy bastards? I actually have no doubt that publishers are more than a bit greedy to hold on to their stranglehold on the publishing market and squeeze as much profit out of it as possible . . . . but large publishers have higher overhead (even for electronic only products) and have larger concerns (ebooks competing with paper books).
Back to WotC and D&D RPG PDFs (too . . . many . . . acronyms . . .), WotC has to look at their overall costs for a specific book, both in print and electronic forms, and also how the pricing of an individual product will affect and support the rest of the line. They have to worry about too aggressive ebook pricing cannibalizing print sales (which are still important and the core of their business). They also have to get over the "why bother" hump, making sure that the pricing of their ebook releases covers all expenses, makes a reasonable profit, and doesn't hurt print sales or DDI subscriptions in some way.
Should D&D ebooks be cheaper than the print versions? I think so and I hope they are . . . from a personal perspective I hope they are super cheap so I can easily purchase them all! But how cheap is "right"? I'm not going to second guess WotC's pricing decisions . . . I just won't purchase as many of their offerings if they are too expensive for me personally.
And of course, since WotC has made no announcements as to when, if, how, and how much they'll be offering RPG ebooks for . . . . I'll save my worries when we actually have some facts to discuss.
Dire Bare
Legend
We're not quite there yet with ereaders. Ereaders are both technically excellent and have hit a market penetration where offering your novels and short stories (without much in the way of graphics, pictures, tables, charts, etc) makes good sense. And WotC is releasing all new titles, and some old titles, from their novel lines in ebook formats
But an affordable and quality full-color ereader than can easily support larger format books with lots of pictures, tables, etc . . . we're not quite there yet. Obviously, the iPad can handle this type of book . . . . but the iPad is not cheap and is only one manufacturer/format. When we get cheaper iPads with several quality competitor products . . . which isn't far away . . . then we'll be there.
Also, with older D&D material (especially older Dragon and Dungeon magazines), there are some licensing issues that may keep these treasures from us forever (sigh).
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