D&D 5E Any word on (Full) 5e PDFs?

[Mistwell]

I don't see that at all. Dark Heresy Second Edition: Core Rulebook is $60 on their website,

Sorry, we're not communicating. When I said ebooks, I meant ebooks in general, not the much smaller RPG market (which just doesn't involve a sample size large enough to claim anything is representative). I am talking about the ebook pricing scheme for a new novel for instance, versus the ebook pricing on that same novel.

 

[Mistwell]

Comparing the regular ebook market with gaming ebooks is apples and pears: they're not quite as different as oranges and seems identical on the surface, but the similarities are mostly superficial.

Well you can't have it both ways. You cannot say the "world" has changed for ebooks versus harcopy books, and then when that comparison doesn't go your way then claim that for this discussion we're only talking about the much much smaller sample size of just the RPG market, which has a huge variety within it that is quite dissimilar to the wider "world change" market for ebooks versus hardcopies.

So we can say that WOTC should confirm to the worldwide changes in the general ebook versus hardcopy book pricing scheme, in which case the ebooks should be priced not too far off from the hardcopy price (or in this case people were saying 1/3rd the MSRP of the hardcopy price was still too high). Or we can say the RPG market, which is very small and has quite unique elements to it, doesn't really have a standard you can go by due to the wide variation and small sample sizes. In which case, there is no complaint about WOTC not following some worldwide trend in ebooks versus hardcopies for their pricing.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I don't think that is accurate. If a book is released first as a hardback, the ebook price tends to be close to that hardback price...until the softcover copy is released.

Sure, some publishers start more expensive during first sales, then lower their prices over time. RPGs don't usually follow this practice. 5E in particular is dependent on the books having a long tail in sales, due to the lack of regular releases.

That's purely a matter of choice for readers though. I own several books in both hardcopy and ebook format, just like some people do for RPGs and others do not. I am not sure personal preference for that is really relevant here for pricing.

Right, but those books tend to be priced higher than standard books to begin with, so the PDF price is basically factored into the book price.

I'm taking these together because I believe that RPG books have more in common with programming books than novels. In both cases, we're talking more expensive, niche products used primary as reference material. We also see divergent approaches, with some companies charging more for digital books than others. Whichever path WotC takes, they won't be blazing a new trail.

It's entirely valid for us to discuss what we feel is a fair price for a PDF. And that will definitely be influenced by whether or not we already own the book itself, since it changes the value proposition.

 

[Jester David]

Well you can't have it both ways. You cannot say the "world" has changed for ebooks versus harcopy books, and then when that comparison doesn't go your way then claim that for this discussion we're only talking about the much much smaller sample size of just the RPG market, which has a huge variety within it that is quite dissimilar to the wider "world change" market for ebooks versus hardcopies.

I don't recall say "the world has changed", I said "You should never be expected to pay *more* for a digital product". Ideally you should pay less, but there's some price fixing and other factors involved.
But I should have been more careful with my words to emphasise that I was only talking about the RPG industry on an RPG forum rather than all industries everywhere.

Getting beyond our little circle always gets makes prices seem screwy. It'd be irrelevant bringing the price of prepainted plastic miniatures bought at a Michael's craft store into a discussion of fantasy minis. It has no bearing on what WizKids can charge for their minis.
(But, if you can get some bases, that's an amazing place for some lesser seen creatures. I have some horses, dinosaurs, dragons, "dire" animals, and a tortoise that served as a gargantuan dragon turtle in a Dragonlance game.)

So we can say that WOTC should confirm to the worldwide changes in the general ebook versus hardcopy book pricing scheme, in which case the ebooks should be priced not too far off from the hardcopy price (or in this case people were saying 1/3rd the MSRP of the hardcopy price was still too high). Or we can say the RPG market, which is very small and has quite unique elements to it, doesn't really have a standard you can go by due to the wide variation and small sample sizes. In which case, there is no complaint about WOTC not following some worldwide trend in ebooks versus hardcopies for their pricing.

WotC should follow the model of market leaders in the RPG hobby. They should follow the industry standard for their industry to the best of their ability. They shouldn't price their products like, say, textbooks. Or Stephen King bestsellers. Or Scholastic Book Fair books. They should price them like other RPG books, albeit ones likely to sell an order of magnitude more copies than most RPG companies.

Obviously, there will be some changes. Since they do not deal in direct sales, they cannot sell "hardcopy + PDF" bundles like, oh, every other major publisher (and most small publishers). And they will have DungeonScape offering a paid app experience. But they can't just ignore the rest of the industry and price PDFs however they want.

If they charge too much people just won't buy. I'd argue the 4e PDFs emphasised this, where many more people pirated the PHB2 than bought legal copies.
---edit---
WotC CEO Greg Leeds claims here that 10x as many people pirated the PHB2 that purchased a legal PDF.
http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/14726.html

That's what charging full price for PDFs does to sales. Because, at that time, you could get the physical copy from amazon with one day shipping for significantly less than the PDF.

---end edit---


If I own a CD but the song gets screwy on my iPod, I have no hesitation about hitting a torrent site to get a fresh copy rather than unearthing the disk from whatever storage box it's buried in: I paid my money for a legal copy. It's very clear that, when the price is too high, gamers will simply "steal" their backup/portable copies of books. It's easy to justify if they've already bought their dead tree copy.
If WotC releases a cheap PDF then it will sell. Even people who've "stolen" a PDF might buy one, opting to trade their money for a better scan. Especially if it's a good PDF with bookmarks and hyperlinks. I'll happily buy a PDF for as much as $15 for a decent copy or even $20 for one that has some extra work put into its usability. $30? Not a chance.

 

[Mistwell]

WotC should follow the model of market leaders in the RPG hobby.

In 40 years, it's been WOTC or their predecessor company that's dominated that market more than 90% of the time, and they are dominating it this moment as well. So, WOTC is the market leader. I understand there was a brief period of time (say 3 years of 40 years, recently), most of which coincided with WOTC not selling many products anyway, where they were not the #1 company. But that does not make them not a market leader, or even THE market leader, for the overall general industry. So it's their decision to set the market leading pace. They make the industry standard.

But they can't just ignore the rest of the industry and price PDFs however they want.

Of course they can. Industry leaders often do, particularly when they have such a long history of being the overwhelming dominant, and sometimes sole player, in that industry.

If they charge too much people just won't buy.

MANY people said $50 for the core books was charging too much and people wouldn't buy. Looks now like it's the best selling core rulebooks of all time, at least in the short term. Industry leaders can get away with charging more than the competition, and they usually do.

I'd argue the 4e PDFs emphasised this, where many more people pirated the PHB2 than bought legal copies.

The focus of the conversation has been on core books. I have no idea about supplement books. I think that is yet another sub-set of the industry which has it's own factors.

 

[prosfilaes]

Sorry, we're not communicating. When I said ebooks, I meant ebooks in general, not the much smaller RPG market (which just doesn't involve a sample size large enough to claim anything is representative). I am talking about the ebook pricing scheme for a new novel for instance, versus the ebook pricing on that same novel.

The rest of my post goes

Outside the RPG industry, O'Reilly's AngularJS: Up and Running is $40 for print and $34 in ebook ($17 if you follow their mailing list and wait until it's on sale), and $28 print /$15 Kindle on Amazon. Notes on Set Theory (Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics) is $79 hardcover, $49 softcover and $44 Kindle on Amazon. Oxford's Set Theory: Boolean-Valued Models and Independence Proofs is $178 hardback, $50 softcover and $32 Kindle.

The only one of these that had an ebook more expensive then Amazon print was O'Reilly, and programmers on a budget can almost always get 50% on pretty much any of their ebooks with a little patience, or just grab the Kindle version. Oxford and ... both offer certain books in ebook at 75% off their hardcover prices.

You say that "those books tend to be priced higher than standard books to begin with", but I don't see any reason to consider mass market novels "standard books" here. They may be a lot of the market, but their sheer volume makes them a specialized market. We should compare RPGs to other limited-market works in a similar price range.

 

[Jester David]

In 40 years, it's been WOTC or their predecessor company that's dominated that market more than 90% of the time, and they are dominating it this moment as well. So, WOTC is the market leader. I understand there was a brief period of time (say 3 years of 40 years, recently), most of which coincided with WOTC not selling many products anyway, where they were not the #1 company. But that does not make them not a market leader, or even THE market leader, for the overall general industry. So it's their decision to set the market leading pace. They make the industry standard.

Of course they can (ignore the rest of the industry). Industry leaders often do, particularly when they have such a long history of being the overwhelming dominant, and sometimes sole player, in that industry.

1) Arguably, it was not listening to their fanbase that caused them to lose their position of market leader, a postion they lost for four years and are still playing catch-up.
2) WotC lost their lead in the market while still publishing books, as early as Fall 2010.
3) We still don't know if WotC has reliably regained its spot as "industry leader" in any permenant capacity

If WotC takes a my-way-or-the-highway approach to their fans and pricing, the fans have shown they are quite willing to take the "highway" option.
WotC is still the biggest company, but they're up against some good competition now. There's a lot of smaller Kickstarter funded companies and games willing to give them a run for their money.

MANY people said $50 for the core books was charging too much and people wouldn't buy. Looks now like it's the best selling core rulebooks of all time, at least in the short term. Industry leaders can get away with charging more than the competition, and they usually do.

I paid the $50 because I like my FLGS. That's the only reason I that price was acceptable over amazon. And even then the $58 CAD I paid was pretty steep, and hard to justify.
If the splatbooks have an equivalent price/content I might skip. I'm already wary of the Elemental Evil Adventurer's Handbook as it sounds pretty pricey.

The focus of the conversation has been on core books. I have no idea about supplement books. I think that is yet another sub-set of the industry which has it's own factors.[/QUOTE]

 

[Mistwell]

I don't see any reason to consider mass market novels "standard books" here. They may be a lot of the market, but their sheer volume makes them a specialized market.

Wait, what? Did you just say stuff that sells an overwhelming majority of the market makes that a "specialized market"? By that definition, since niche sales are specialized, and mass sales are specialized, ALL markets are specialized. In which case we're back to saying there is no standard.

 

[Mistwell]

1) Arguably, it was not listening to their fanbase that caused them to lose their position of market leader, a postion they lost for four years and are still playing catch-up.

Wait, that is a tautology. The fanbase is not the same as the rest of the industry. Paizo could not have gained industry advantage but-for the fanbase issue, and therefore it was not the industry they were ignoring, but the fanbase. Indeed, the rest of the industry, before they lost leadership, was by definition doing things which caused all those other companies to NOT be the industry leader. Therefore we know for sure following the industry is not what is needed to gain leadership (Paizo was not following the industry, or else they would have released a 4e-type game too). It's the fanbase that's at issue, which is not the same as the industry, and right now the fanbase is buying WOTC books in droves.

2) WotC lost their lead in the market while still publishing books, as early as Fall 2010.

I never said or implied different.

3) We still don't know if WotC has reliably regained its spot as "industry leader" in any permenant capacity

Again, nobody said or implied different. I said the overwhelming majority of the 40 years theres been an industry, they led. And I said AT THE MOMENT, they lead.

If WotC takes a my-way-or-the-highway approach to their fans

No, wait, this has a basic false assumption. You assume you have a measure of the fanbase. You do not.

There's a lot of smaller Kickstarter funded companies and games willing to give them a run for their money.

OK, no offense, but that is ridiculous. No, they do not. Not even a tiny little bit. The biggest of the biggest kickstarter funded companies are still so extraordinary tiny that they are literally rounding errors for WOTC, even at the lowest point for WOTC. This is one of those internet echo-chamber time things. The extreme large majority of people never even hear of those games. Even on the net when you look at the games people are talking about all the kickstarter games combined are almost a rounding error for the number of people talking 5e right now.

 

[prosfilaes]

Wait, what? Did you just say stuff that sells an overwhelming majority of the market makes that a "specialized market"? By that definition, since niche sales are specialized, and mass sales are specialized, ALL markets are specialized. In which case we're back to saying there is no standard.

McDonald's may be the best selling restaurants in the world, but you don't compare the new Nigerian place to McDonald's. Maybe you can't get apples to apples, but you'd do much better comparing the new Nigerian family-run place to the Thai family-run place down the street then to McDonald's.