Cost of Core Books PDFs

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I guess "cost of production" is a meaningless aspect for determining prices anymore. IT cost much, much more to get a book into my hands then it costs to get a PDF onto my computer.

If others are willing to pay overly high prices on a PDF, well, then there are companies out there more than happy to take your money.

They won't get mine. Ever.

Yes, it is. Especially in the digital area. It costs almost nothing to give you a piece of software, but a lot to create it in the first place.

 

[Treebore]

Take a look at what other companies are charging for PDFs of books. Wizards prices are not out of line with the current market.

So? That just means too many people are willing to pay too much for PDF's. Besides, I do know. There are some Green Ronin PDF's I am willing to buy, Goodman, and a couple of other companies.

Most companies are charging too much, which is why most of the PDF's I have were either free, or were offered up in some great ENWorld sales.

I have not bought a single Necroamncer PDF, for example, and I have been accused of being a Necromancer fan boy. The only one I have come close to buying is one I got "free" for pre ordering RA:R.

The bottom line is PDF do not cost the same to offer for sale, and does not even have to go through a tier or three of resellers if they want to host their own PDF site from which to sell them. Even then it only goes through one, and I doubt they charge 20 to 40% of the retail price to do so.

PDF's do not require printing, they do not require storage in warehouses or in stores, they do not require shipping via semi's to get to their points of sale. They do not require people to load, unload, box, or unbox at these various stages.

So to say that charging greater than 50% of a books retail is fair is in my view a lie. I am a firm believer in "triple key" pricing, and PDF's, as well as far too many companies, have been going far beyond this for far too long.

So I wish people would start to realize that companies making too much of a profit off of you is still wrong, and start refusing to buy such items. Too many people seem to think that a company trying to maximize their profits, etc... is a good thing, and is sufficient justification to over charge for their products and take peoples hard earned money.

In my book, this is unacceptable, so I do not buy PDF's, I do not buy software through retail outlets, and so on. IT is not OK with me for a company to suck as much of my money out of my pocket as they dare to get away with. In my book getting more than 200% margin of profit is in the realm of greed, not fair profit.

So when I find products that have such a high mark up I do my best to not buy them.

 

[Treebore]

Yes, it is. Especially in the digital area. It costs almost nothing to give you a piece of software, but a lot to create it in the first place.

Not in the case of PDF's. Plus software is highly over priced as well, and always has been. The profit margin on software is disgusting and is the reason why Microsoft, etc... became so insanely wealthy like they did.

In the case of PDF's, those are created to publish a book to begin with. So if you published a book in print, that PDF already exists. So up to that point creating a PDF is no more expensive then getting that book ready to be printed.

Its after that when the printed book costs go up even more, but the cost of creating that PDF stays the same.

So a PDF is MUCH cheaper to produce then a printed book. IF the difference in cost wasn't substantial a lot more of these PDF publishers would be offering their books, in print, at Amazon and on store shelves, rather than maybe as print on demand at Lulu's.

 

[Pinotage]

IT cost much, much more to get a book into my hands then it costs to get a PDF onto my computer.

If others are willing to pay overly high prices on a PDF, well, then there are companies out there more than happy to take your money.

They won't get mine. Ever.

I'm not so sure. At $35 for the hardcover, how much would WotC get? $15 or something. I don't know. They don't get that much more from the pdf since RPGNow/DrivethrRPG take their cut as well.

Pinotage

 

[Darkwolf71]

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.

Printing costs money. You're slightly discounted books now cost as much as the 'real' thing. And if the discount goes away or was not included in the first place...

Re: Complaints. I simply find it odd that almost nobody complained about WotC charging full cover price for their D&D 3x PDF products (which they have been doing for years now), but as soon as they charged less than full cover price for their D&D 4e products, a small group of people more or less went into meltdown mode. Why is that, I wonder? Is charging consumers less money suddenly a bad thing?

I and many others complained loudly and often about the price of 3.5 PDFs. I would be very surprised if you could find a single thread about the availability of these PDFs where someone didn't complain. In fact, were I a betting man, I'd lay down serious cash that it would be an impossible task.

 

[Fenes]

This is starting to sound like a "media war".

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Not in the case of PDF's. Plus software is highly over priced as well, and always has been. The profit margin on software is disgusting and is the reason why Microsoft, etc... became so insanely wealthy like they did.

In the case of PDF's, those are created to publish a book to begin with. So if you published a book in print, that PDF already exists. So up to that point creating a PDF is no more expensive then getting that book ready to be printed.

Its after that when the printed book costs go up even more, but the cost of creating that PDF stays the same.

So a PDF is MUCH cheaper to produce then a printed book. IF the difference in cost wasn't substantial a lot more of these PDF publishers would be offering their books, in print, at Amazon and on store shelves, rather than maybe as print on demand at Lulu's.

But what if they actually aren't making too much money, but just enough to make the whole thing actually profitable for them? Maybe the comparatively high priced PDFs is the only way to sustain the PDF market in the first place?

 

[Dice4Hire]

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.
(

Did you ever look atthe sales figures for those PDFs? Absolutely terrible, at least through RPGNOW

 

[Dice4Hire]

To add onto my previous post, I am not a fan of PDFs in any way, shape or form. I won't go into why, as no one likely cares, but it is a segment of the market that has gotten very little of my money.

 

[amethal]

Wasn't there something about scanning a barcode and getting the PDF for a few bucks more at one time or another?

Yeah. This is also the thread where the RoUS puts 3catcircus on his ignore list.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=210324