philreed said:
Well, everyone already knows of my annoyance of the "chunk'o'book" concept. I do see a place for these products as a way to generate a little extra money through early publication of short PDF "teasers", but I don't think they should be produced in the insane quantities that both LPJ Designs and your own Ronin Arts do. And when used as a teaser (or eventually added to a compilation), those short PDFs should be removed from the catalog once the larger product containing them is released.
I'm expecting to see this too. People are getting tired of all the one-hit wonders out there who do one book and vanish. And don't get me started on all the companies on RPGnow who signed up as vendors, but never bothered releasing a single product...
But on the flip side, I also expect to see soon after that a change on the "fan" side as well. Just as GOO, MEG and GRG have started up vanity imprints on the paper side, I'm sure someone will start up a vanity imprint on the PDF side as well.
The ones who unseat rpgnow will be the ones who can offer more features and better features than RPGnow, at the same or better prices. Simply offering the same rates and features won't cut it.
WW and SJGames currently have little or no chance to be contenders, because their inventories are too narrow. Until they put some real effort in expanding their PDF offering to products outside their own company inventories, neither will do any better in the PDF arena than any other company trying to sell games on their own website.
SVGames won't be a contender for three reasons: no communications, they take 50%, and no vendor control over sale prices.
Hyperbooks Online... well, all I can say is Terry needs to learn a lesson from the larger online vendors and learn not be so nebulous with vendor information. Closest thing I saw for a percentage take for Hyperbooks was 75%, but that was in return for him acting as a producer (editing layout, art, etc). Currently, his big benefit are a multitude of delivery options and a strong customer service orientation.
Amazon.com won't be any contention, either. Already too big for its britches, I've seen too much vendor and consumer grief related to them. Slow payment, nonpayment, JIT stock architecture, and the requirement for an ISBN on a PDF are all reasons to stay away, whether you do print or PDF. It just isn't cost effective to do business with them.
Ironically, the only contender was a company that doesn't deal in PDFs anymore; RPG.net. The system was very similar to RPGnow, and at one point, their delivery system they had was one that could have easily integrated very basic anti-piracy security. But these days, they won't even touch a PDF
Hmmm... Yeah, security is going to become an issue in the next year or two. A lot of PDF publishers are loosing money in buckets and don't even know it. But eventually, everyone will catch on and start demanding an online shop that provides anti-piracy measures.
Subscription models make me sick to my stomach. I've had more problems with subscriptions on and off line than I have had with any other financial dealing in my life. I could probably manage to finance a multimillion dollar house on the first try easier than I could manage to get a subscription working right on the first try.
At this time, the only people subscription models work well for are those folks running porn sites. It will be another 10 years before there's a real mainstream headway made in the conversion of print subscription models to online subscription models.
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