Cost of Core Books PDFs

[Dragon Snack]

Game stores will complain if the product is available more cheaply online, and they are important to WotC's market overall.

Really!? Do you think WotC cares one whit about game stores?

I find it quite interesting that the PDFs are priced just above Amazon's prices...

 

[Fifth Element]

Cuz they both hit pretty close to the same result on my personal economic utility function? That's pretty much the definition of having equal value.

Indeed. Can't argue with that.

PDFs have advantages and disadvantages compared to print products. Some prefer one to the other. Not a difficult concept.

 

[Fifth Element]

Granted RPGNow and DriveThruRPG are discounting the pdfs

To be clear, it is not OBS that's discounting the books, it's Wizards. Publishers set their own prices at these sites, and control all discounts.

 

[SSquirrel]

Also, no, as you mention -- but, again, for many people that's a huge advantage over printed products. Why break your back carrying around twenty books in a knapsack, when you can carry hundreds of products in the palm of your hand?
*snip*
(e.g., if a copy gets physically damaged or destroyed) are genuinely valuable options that are worth the asking price.

All of the above are great reasons to buy the Ptolus pdf. Not to mention it was a limited item. I'm glad I have it on my shelf, but the next time there's a sale on it and I have the spare cash (the REAL trick!) I'll most likely buy it. And yes J, you were probably just too busy to read those threads

An interesting comparison here is the video game industry (no I don't think 4E is a videogame before you ask). The video game industry typically doesn't get to give much, if any, discount on their all digital copies of games if they want to be carried by major retailers. I can go to Blizzard's website and buy Diablo 2 and it's expansion for $20 each..or go buy the battle chest w/both in it for $40. You would expect some sort of discount based on no physical production (not to mention that the battle chest should be down to $20 after 8 years, but I digress) but there is none. Typically any discounts you do find are strictly limited sales.

 

[Mercule]

Well, Crothian (in the other PDF thread) has said the new PDFs are copy/paste enabled. If so, then the PDF of the Monster Manual is probably worth more than the physical book--just paste all monsters for each encounter into a document & you're good to go (no page flipping!).

Hmm... Anyone have a comment about the layout quality of copy-pasting various powers into power cards? I know that those sorts of operations often run into loss of formatting. If not, then I'm somewhat more tempted, though probably not $25 tempted.

It's funny, really, because there was almost no complaining about WotC charging full cover price for PDFs of their entire 3x line, but now that they've discounted the 4e core books to sell them for far less than their typical going rate, a bunch of people are suddenly up in arms.

If it came up, I was more than willing to give my opinion on how (less than) valuable the 3.5 PDFs were.

The difference now is a) it's been brought up about 4e and b) there were early promises of cheap PDFs for those of us who bought dead trees. As much as I don't think the current quality of PDFs will be replacing my paper books, I do like the idea of being able to carry my whole library to a game on my tablet. That'd be especially handy for those books I rarely reference -- but when I need to, I need to.

I have a stack of printed PDF products that refutes this fallacy, as common as it may be. As I mention elsewhere, a big advantage of PDFs is that they can be printed and bound in a 'lay flat' format, allowing them to. . . er. . . lay flat -- something that hardcover and perfectbound books just won't due, unless you break the spines. That said, I understand that this isn't of value to everybody.

Out of curiosity, what's it cost you to print off a PDF? Do you do it in full color/high quality or do you scale down? I ask because I could see some advantage in the deal if the printing only costs ~$5 (yes, I know that total is still less than the MSRP of the hardcovers). My understanding, though, is that it costs almost as much to print a PDF yourself as it does to buy the book in the first place.

 

[Shemeska]

I would never pay the full price of a printed book for the pdf. I have a difficult time seeing why someone would do that, and an equally hard time understanding what marketing was thinking when they considered the idea. Just doesn't sit well with me. It's like I'm voluntarily paying someone to enjoy a higher profit margin at my expense.

PDFs of books are like mp3 downloads from Amazon in my mind, you don't get the physical hardcopy, and as a result you pay relatively dirt cheap prices to get them ($1 a song, and usually like $8 or so for a full album). I have no problem with the pdfs being sold for slashed rates compared to the actual book. Something like $10 for a pdf of a current WotC hardcover, or half that price for an out of print book seems fair to me (and the point where I'd actually pay for stuff in only electronic form at).

Charging full price for a pdf seems like an easy way to shoot yourself in the foot because it gives e-pirates something to rationalize petty theft with.

 

[Fifth Element]

Charging full price for a pdf seems like an easy way to shoot yourself in the foot because it gives e-pirates something to rationalize petty theft with.

I don't think they need any help with that.

 

[Hussar]

I too remember the bit about getting the pdf for a nominal fee that was mentioned a while back. Wonder if that idea got scrapped. Not much is being said now.

As far as piracy goes, you could pretty much give it away for free and people would still pirate. Price doesn't really change that that much. Every song that you pay a buck for is available to be pirated.

 

[malraux]

Out of curiosity, what's it cost you to print off a PDF? Do you do it in full color/high quality or do you scale down? I ask because I could see some advantage in the deal if the printing only costs ~$5 (yes, I know that total is still less than the MSRP of the hardcovers). My understanding, though, is that it costs almost as much to print a PDF yourself as it does to buy the book in the first place.

For B/W printing, I think my printing costs are around a penny or so per page. For most books, that works fine. I picked up a few of Monte's products, and all the text works fine with B/W printing, as do most old TSR adventures.

 

[jdrakeh]

Out of curiosity, what's it cost you to print off a PDF?

It depends on the page count and paper stock, but about $10.00 to $20.00 on average for 200-ish, double-sided, pages with clear mylar covers sheets and spiral binding. The last thing that I had printed and bound in this manner (Labyrinth Lord) had full color covers with the mylar overlays, was spiral bound with wire, and cost $13.00

Do you do it in full color/high quality or do you scale down?

Again, it depends on the book, really. I typically only print in greyscale, save for covers and/or maps, as color rarely has much utility outside of those areas in RPG books. In most cases, I can print entirely in black and white and lose no utility. I do always print in extremely high resolution, regardless of whether I print in color or not.

My understanding, though, is that it costs almost as much to print a PDF yourself as it does to buy the book in the first place.

Not at all. You just have to go to a print shop with reasonable rates (sadly, they're not as common as they could be). A cost of $10 to $20 is less than about one third to one half of what a regular RPG book costs these days. When I factor in the PDF purchase price, I'm typically looking at something close to the price for a book off of the shelf, though occassionally about $10.00 less.

That said. . .

The real advantage to PDF books is, IME, that if your printed book gets damaged, you can always print a new copy. If you only have a hardcopy of a book and it gets fouled with water, soda, or fire (I've had it happen) -- or if it is lost or stolen -- you're pretty much 100% screwed on recovery each and every time.

Also, though it may sound like a small thing, being able to open a reference book to Page X during game play and have it stay open to Page X is a thing of beauty.