Buying books by the chapter

[Quasqueton]

Something I would like:

Being able to buy chapters of books, like buying individual songs from albums. That way, I could skip the feats and prestige class chapters and just get the game advice and campaign ideas chapters.

I could get all I want from the five Complete * books in just one book. There are many books out now that I don't buy because they are half to two-thirds feats & prestige classes.

I'd like to buy 200 pages for $30, if all 200 pages would be useful to me. What with the PDF and print-on-demand technology, is this something we may see in the near future?

Quasqueton

 

[JoeGKushner]

I can see this happening in PDF format, but not necessarily by chapter, but by theme, or utility. Most publishers break up their chapters this way anyway mind you but it's something most publishers have siad would cost too much for too little return, despite all the actual writing being done. :\

 

[Crothian]

It has happened to some extent, though very small. The reverse happens more though, a bunch os small PDFs bundled together to a larger print version.

 

[Eolin]

This is the sort of micro-economy I expect to see more and more of as computing happens more and more. As much as I love the feel of a book in my hands, I've been doing reading through PDFs recently. Whether it be journal articles or DnD books -- PDF is easier.

A couple days ago I read of a tech that would ask the usres if an email was worth their time. There was some monetary loss to the sender if it wasn't -- but the point is that this is exactly the sort of tech we should expect to see more of. We'll be selling our attention more and more -- as if you've got our attention, you can give us your ads.

Also, I highly expect that the 30-second spot is going to go away in the next few years. Instead, expect ads integrated into the shows. Every show I watch has got the station logo plastered on it -- soon that'll be an advertising spot. The 30-second spot will disapear because of tivo and downloading. But commercials integrated into the show we can't get rid of, and they'll be here to stay.

That got off topic a little. I just woke up.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Unlikely to happen. In the music industry, the single is a viable product because at $1 a pop, the increase in unit sales of a popular song can outweigh the loss in whole-album sales (although there is no guarantee that this is the case), and can also serve as a loss-leader to encourage people who like the hit single to buy the whole CD, the artist's back catalog, next release, etc. Plus, for the most part, the raw numbers you're dealing with are in the tens of thousands and higher.

With the gaming market, unit sales of most books are already pretty low, and the overhead in producing the book relatively high. I would suspect that in general, there is but a single sale of a book per gaming group, and that won't change. Crunch-chapters would sell better than fluff chapters, player-oriented chapters will sell better than GM-oriented chapters. It's less likely that even if you really liked the 'feats' chapter that you'd go back and buy the whole book. Single-chapter sales probably wouldn't help back-catalog sales of whole books, either.

What's more likely is shorter, more focused books, less artwork, quicker release schedules rather than piece-meal sales of larger works. Phil Reed's stuff is an excellent example of this -- nice targeted ebooks, well-written, and the first book I got led me to buy more.

Economically, allowing the consumer to cherry-pick parts of a whole only makes sense if it leads to greater sales overall. I don't think for big books that that would happen.

 

[philreed]

What's more likely is shorter, more focused books, less artwork, quicker release schedules rather than piece-meal sales of larger works. Phil Reed's stuff is an excellent example of this -- nice targeted ebooks, well-written, and the first book I got led me to buy more.

Glad to hear that you're enjoying Ronin Arts' PDFs. As many of you already know I'm a believer in the concept of allowing customers to pick and choose an assortment of small products to get only what interests them. The collections are for those that dislike the short PDF model.

Lately I've noticed a significant increase in the number of shorter PDFs. It will be interesting to see how this works out over the next year.

 

[philreed]

Also, I highly expect that the 30-second spot is going to go away in the next few years. Instead, expect ads integrated into the shows. Every show I watch has got the station logo plastered on it -- soon that'll be an advertising spot. The 30-second spot will disapear because of tivo and downloading. But commercials integrated into the show we can't get rid of, and they'll be here to stay.

Last week I saw an ad pop up at the bottom of the screen during a local news broadcast. I can see this becoming a lot more common -- after all, it's better to spend the ad dollars to display something the target audience cannot walk away from if they want to watch the show.

 

[Celebrim]

Yeah, I agree that it is unlikely to happen because the economics don't support it, but...

For get the chapter, in my ideal world I'd be able to buy gaming books by the page!!!

Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to flip through a book like (for example) Monster Manual III, and then after carefully thinking it over realizing that there are maybe in the 224 pages 15-20 pages that you are actually interested in. Much as those 15-20 pages intrigue me, they don't give me alot of reason to buy the other 210 pages of material that I find silly and uncompelling given that the whole book is going to run me $30 and I want less than 10% of it. Now, if I could buy those 20 pages for $4.95, I'd probably do so, but like Rodrigo said, the economics just don't support it.

 

[diaglo]

not really interested in buying chapters...

it was hard enough buying comic books back in the day...

some times you couldn't make it to the store .... and then you missed a whole issue or maybe two or even three... and by the time you got another copy the story was onto some other tangent....

 

[Celebrim]

Lately I've noticed a significant increase in the number of shorter PDFs. It will be interesting to see how this works out over the next year.

The big problem with short PDF's is that you can't get enough preview of them to judge thier overall quality without seeing basically the whole thing. I don't have a good solution for this, even though I love the idea of being able to buy content in small affordable packets - if only because I'm not a very wealthy fellow (and I've got a pair of twins on the way!)